Terry Brown

I am rereading the McGee series and have not been disappointed. They have held up quite well. In the middle of this one, though, I almost started skimming. The details of the scam McGee runs to gain revenge on his friend's killers didn't make sense and my eyes glazed over. But then I came to the last two chapters and everything about this book changed. Those chapters are the best of MacDonald and of McGee. It boosted my rating from three to four stars and I left the book anticipating #10.

This book has little to recommend it. It is an epistolary novel and the setup is not unique at all–it remeinded me immediately of A Princess of Mars. The SF concept is also old–see Heinlein's “And He Built a Crooked House”, for example. There are monsters–who would have thought it?–and a quest for understanding of a big idea–which isn't so big or clever–and on and on. Binge gives us little that is new or particularly creative, and the story line and characters are not special enough to make be care more than two stars worth.

I did finish it, although I am not sure why.

This is a completely depressing novel. It is a thriller about the world of power
and money and sex, set in Hollywood, but the implied location is simply the
world. The power brokers are rich white men and they are protected by those who
manipulate the media and justice with money and blackmail.

Mae is a mid-level worker for Blackguard, a candestine marketing firm that fixes
problems for Hollywood's white, powerful men. They have no morals and no ethics.
Mae, and Chris sort of fight against this when things get too awful. But
throughout, we are reminded continually that they can never win.

The book is depressing and without much redeeming value, although it is a
compelling read.

I was looking forward to this book but it was very disappointing. I expected fascinating science speculation and interesting writing. Instead the science was not clearly integrated into the story, but came across as fantasy. The problem with the premise about observer created reality is that it can be anything, so making a compelling storyline is difficult. There is a built-in deux ex machina. When you can do anything, nothing matters, and neither does this book.

I haven't read an ending like Fairy Tale in some time. And I haven't savored
the words quite as much as I did for the last fifty pages of this book.

This is vintage King–his strengths are evident as are his weaknesses. The
story flows and King wraps us in the life of Charlie Reade until the
fantastical elements King hints at in the first 300 pages or so finally become
our milieu.

The next 400 pages are an action adventure novel to match the best
of Edgar Rice Burroughs–but with King's fine touch of character and his deft
ability to make his story exciting and complex and founded in the history of
classical fantasy as well as SF and horror. It's a tour de force. The only
caveat I have is King's penchant for true, grisly horror which at times is a
little much for me.

But it is the final 50 pages that make the book and leave me feeling satisfied
and full and, yes, happy. I savored those pages and didn't want them to end.
And I loved that King told me the happy ending was coming.

King is a master of what he does. Many times he is simply a master. I will
always wonder what could have been if he had been able to tame the nasty demons
within himself that more often than not overwhelmed the immense talent he has
for writing stories about people we care about with ichor and gore.

A book that might be as good as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow!

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is unique, revelatory, funny, poignant, insightful and outrageous while being a treatise on sexism and its origins in America. At once absurd and filled with horrible as well as heartwarming reality it is a romance and a bildungsroman for our time and our lives. How we can like Calvin and Elizabeth as much as we do is testament to Garmus's talented prose, absurd plotting and the influence of Mad, who isn't mad (in the sense of crazy) at all. And there is a dog, of course, Six-Thirty, who understands life deeply through smell, and who, by the end of the book, knows 981 words. And why wasn't the cover a reproduction of Mad's family tree?

What a wonderful book!

This is an exceptional historical novel. It is a slow read, quite long, but I found myself languishing over Macleod's prose. Her descriptions, her narrative, her imagery, her similes–all were complexly drawn to engage and expand and enrich the experience. I knew of the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, but now I have lived it.

I found Fair Warning to be a compelling read, but not as engaging as I wanted or expected. I have read both The Poet and The Scarecrow and remember loving the books. But in this one, I find Jack McEvoy to be an irritating asshole and this detracts from the book for me. It is difficult to read a story where the main character is less than sympathetic, and McEvoy, in this book, is.
Still, the story, revolving around genetic analysis, and the involvement of Rachel Walling drew me in and I had to keep reading.
Particularly in the first part of the novel, I felt that Connelly's handling of the details of the story were not as strong as I have seen in the Harry Bosch novels. At times, I almost felt like this was an old novel, written years ago when he was still learning how to write police procedurals.

I hated this book. In our time of coronavirus and hyper-partisan politics it came at me viciously using long sentences steeped in the cultural vernacular of a person fifty years younger than I, filled with references I didn't understand, and the righteous anger of a young black woman struggling to find her place personally and professionally in a society that judges her based on her blackness and her gender and little else.

I loved this book. The driving force of Edie's narration, her unique personality, viewpoint and language, slowly won me over, although it took time. By the last quarter of the book I was mesmerized by her inability to overcome her own choices while persevering as if she could. I was overcome with a sense of pre-ordained doom. I hoped for an epiphany. I savored every word, researched every confusing cultural reference. Because of the way Leilani builds this story and Edie's character, the ending was satisfying for me, although I can't tell you why.

Edie, the mid-twenties protagonist narrates in the first person, sometimes with a nearly stream-of-consciousness style that is immediate but difficult for me because it is steeped in the culture of her age group–forty-five years distant from mine. The challenges of Edie's life, the way she lives it, and the cultural milieu she lives it in are not mine–she is an artist, I was an engineer; she is a passionate, young black woman, I am an older white man; I am privileged in many subtle ways, she is not. She is automatically suspect–by the police, by her employers, by the people she meets–I am automatically trusted.

Those differences are the theme, for me. Leilani had to bludgeon me with it and she almost knocked me out, but I withstood her blows and was given a small window into this life I will never know. I felt viscerally what it was like to be Edie, living with and acknowledging her faults and reveling in her fortitude and her insight.

I read a lot science fiction partly to feel the presence of the other and experience worlds I will never know. Raven Leilani, in Luster has given me the best of that in the familiar setting of my own world, but with a perspective alien to me–that of a young, black woman.

Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby is a compelling book written with verve and immediacy. Cosby uses a realistic vernacular at times that immerses the reader in his characters and their culture. Over and over he provides imagery and similes like I have never read before–creative and perfect for his purpose. There is a lot to like here and I found myself forced to continue reading even after I realized that this was not a book for me.

There are no heroes in this book, despite what you may think in the first few chapters. There is revenge and anger and violent justice outside of the rule of law. If that's your thing, you will love this book. But if you want something more, something that is revelatory about the human condition, and our ability to redeem ourselves despite our circumstances, look elsewhere. Perhaps the meaning in Blacktop Wasteland is that redemption is not available to some, and I get that. But that view is so hopeless it makes me reluctant to recommend the book, particularly in today's circumstances. In my old age and in this age of pandemic, I want at least a hint of the positive, a touch of hope that the world can be made better rather than the despair Cosby has given me.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a polymath, a renaissance man with an encyclopedic knowledge of not just climate change, but economics, history, and many other topics. Who else could have written this book? It is a tour de force of science, culture and speculation that feels grounded in reality. For the most part it is a narrative of humanity's attempts to control climate change in the next few decades. We are taken to various places in the world where we see the devastating effects of climate change, the most moving being the death of over 20 million citizens of India during a climate change caused heat wave. We are told stories of refugees and of the scientists trying to understand and mitigate climate change. We follow Mary, the head of the Ministry of the Future, the UN agency charged with the world's response. and along the way we are shown how, potentially, we can survive this disaster.

This book is like Robinson's Mars Trilogy, but the subject is the terraforming of Earth to overcome climate change. It is a masterpiece of organization and complexity management and is perhaps the crowning achievement of Robinson's career. And that is saying something.

This is an important book, read it.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

I suspect most readers either love or hate Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. They either think he is silly or profound, a doddering fool or a wizard. The same is true of his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

His style is at times simplistic, even childish. His prose is sparse, his paragraphs and chapters short. He skitters from scene to scene with abandon, like a child exploring the world. He uses varieties of humor to make tolerable the horror of his subject.

And yet, the effect of this simplicity, childishness and funny stuff is a novel that is profoundly dark, filled with portent and laced by lessons the world and the people in it must learn or forever be doomed. Vonnegut is a trickster, a clever wordsmith who distracts you with a smile and then hits you with a hammer.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the Vonnegut's topic is war, and particularly the fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, which resulted in the deaths of 25,000 civilians (although Vonnegut, writing in the 1960s, references then contemporary estimates in the hundreds of thousands–an exaggeration which emphasizes his point). Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's main character, is a POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing. Vonnegut himself was a POW in Dresden and he speaks, through Billy Pilgrim, with authority about the horrors, injustices, and terrible consequences of war.

For Vonnegut, there is no making sense of this war, nor of this bombing, nor, by extension, of the human condition. And so, Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time and flits back and forth throughout his life, visiting moments here and there, now and then, reflecting on the absurdity of war, the inevitability of death, the chronic sadness of life and the futility of any attempts to make sense of it all.

To add to the absurdity, Pilgrim is abducted by aliens, the Tralfamadorians. The Tralfamadorians are strange-looking creatures with their eyes in the palm of their hands so they have to hold up their open hands to view the world, as if they were saluting, or waving.

The Tralfamadorians have solved all the problems Billy sees–they simply ignore them and remember the good times. But even though Billy may want to do this, it doesn't work for him. He cannot control his skipping through time and this results in reliving moments where he is witness to horror and death because that is what happened. There is no escape for Billy. In the unreality that Vonnegut creates where Billy moves spontaneously from one time to another and where he is a specimen in a Tralfamadorian zoo, he cannot escape the reality of his own experiences and of his own world. He is unstuck in time, but stuck in his own life and his own world as he experienced it. He cannot change it, as much as he might desire to.

That Vonnegut can create such complexity and depth of meaning with simple prose and absurd action is wizardry. We read breezily through the asynchronous events of Billy's life, flying along through short chapters and brief paragraphs, but long before we arrive at the end, we realize that this is a tragic story, and it is our story, everyone's story. So it goes.

Is this science fiction? Yes, but not really. There are certainly science fiction tropes here: time travel; aliens with a unique culture; even virtual space travel. But none of these are the focus of the novel as they are in real science fiction. The science fiction elements of Slaughterhouse-Five are simply plot devices, tools which Vonnegut uses to expand and elaborate his themes.

LeGuin, in The Left Hand of Darkness creates an alien culture and uses it as a means of exploring human sexuality. For LeGuin, the story follows from the world she has created, and the story cannot exist without the science fiction element. Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five tells a mundane story of a man devastated by the experience of war and the manifestations of his trauma include experiences that he describes in science fiction terms. This enhances the unreality of Billy's experience, and allows Vonnegut to point out how absurd his reality is–that World War II and the Dresden bombing have caused him to become unstuck in his own mind and to retreat to a fantasy of alien abduction to save his sanity. This juxtaposition of fantasy and reality and the ill-defined border between the two for Billy provides Vonnegut with a means of framing his anti-war polemic. How can it be, Vonnegut asks, that human beings can treat each other so? Do we not see the unreality and absurdity of it? Do we, like the Trafalmadorians, simply ignore it and therefore trivialize it? So it goes.

In this sense, time travel is not important to the story, it is a plot device used by Vonnegut to illustrate the profound effect that Billy Pilgrim's war experiences have on his psyche–Billy Pilgrim is not really unstuck in time, this is just a manifestation of trauma he has experienced–his center cannot hold and his mind flits randomly from memory to memory.

Nor is the story built upon the existence of the Tralfamadorians, they are a foil to provide Billy Pilgrim with simple but effective answers to the question of how to live with his trauma–remember the good times, ignore the bad. Similarly, Billy's kidnapping by the Tralfamadorians and his time in the Tralfamadorian zoo with Montana Wildhack are Vonnegut's method of providing Billy with some relief from his despair and confusion. On Tralfamadore, with Montana, Billy is content in a way he is not in his own world. He treats Montana with respect and is rewarded. In the zoo on Tralfamadore with Montana is the only time that Billy is content. But this contentment comes with a price–Billy is unable to change anything, because, as the Tralfamadorians explain, everything has already happened.

The result of all of this is a novel that stays in one's mind long after reading it. Where other novels, as compelling as they may be, fade away after a few months, Slaughterhouse-Five blazes like the afterimage of actinic light on your retinas even after fifty years.

I have rarely been as involved in a book as I was in Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan. This book immersed me in the lives of Elisabeth, a late-thirties new mother, married and now living in a small town, and Sam, a college senior who becomes Elisabeth's babysitter. The book is told in alternating sections from Elisabeth's point of view and then from Sam's point of view.

Sullivan weaves a mesmerizing tale of the lives of these two women and how they become intertwined in a complex relationship where Elisabeth is employer, mentor and friend, and Sam is employee, friend and confidant. The boundaries of the relationship are blurred from both sides and become more complex as the story moves forward. Sullivan presents us with such detail of Elisabeth's and Sam's lives and thoughts that we feel we know them as well as we know ourselves—perhaps even better.

The time frame of their relationship is constrained by the fact that Sam will soon graduate and move on to a new, exciting and unknown future, while Elisabeth is established in her marriage and as a parent. Because of this, we know that the relationship will end soon, but at first we are convinced this will be a happy story of two women who are our friends.

Elisabeth is a lovable, but complex and infuriating woman. Sam sees her as having everything Sam dreams of. As their relationship deepens into one of friendship and shared confidence however, the secrets they share become burdens for Sam. Sam's uncertainties about her future with her sort-of fiancee, Clive, and worries about her career after she graduates with a fine arts degree, put her on edge and open her to Elisabeth's manipulations.

Elisabeth can't face the reality of her own desires and ambitions and as a result cannot be honest with her husband, Andrew. Her guilt about her lies leads her to confide in Sam and then, in an attempt to control something in her life, a compulsion to try to save Sam from her youthful immaturity, but this leads her to more deception.

Sam's life is expansive, the world is opening to her. She has her remote relationships, with the older Clive, with her roommate, Izzie, with her Latino friends she works with in the college dormitory kitchen, and a budding friendship with Elisabeth's father-in-law that results in political activism. Elisabeth, by contrast has only her close focus on her family. Sam is Elisabeth's only distraction, and is one she cannot let go. All this builds through the novel, with Elisabeth's lies and deceits becoming more fraught and Sam becoming more uncertain about all aspects of her life.

We love them both and worry about them. How could this end well? How can we not anticipate a devastating and emotionally difficult ending?

But then the book just stops and we are left with a few pages of description of Sam and Elisabeth ten years in the future. We have no idea how Elisabeth's lies and deceptions were resolved with her husband, or if they even were. For Sam, we know more about how she ended up where she did and why. But the book was all about the relationship of Elisabeth and Sam, and the ending ignores that and gives us little resolution, particularly for Elisabeth.

This was a great novel, but it is diminished by the ending.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Longer* by Michael Blumlein is a book I looked forward to based on hearing about it, and wanted to like. There turned out to be almost nothing to like.

The story presents itself as a science fiction puzzle story—an asteroid is captured and brought back to near Earth orbit and there is an object of interest (OOI) on it. Gunjita and Cav are scientists working for a pharmaceutical company on board an earth orbit station investigating a new drug for rejuvenation treatments. The pharmaceutical company, Gleem, is also a mining company and it is Gleem's mining probe that has brought back the asteroid. In addition to their responsibilities investigating new rejuvenation pharmaceuticals, they are also the scientists on scene to investigate the asteroid and the object it brings with it. Is it alien life or not?

Gunjita and Cav are also husband and wife, and have been for 60 years. But now, Gunjita has taken her second rejuvenation treatment and is young again, while Cav is delaying his and is in his 80s.

So, what happens? Well, it turns out the story is really about Cav and the reasons he wants to delay his rejuvenation and why. The asteroid, the development of a new rejuvenation drug, and the complex and presumably portent filled history of Cav and Gunjita and and old friend (Dashaud) and an unexplained historical event called the Hoax and a few other things are just throwaway ideas that allow Blumlein to fill pages in the book.

This still could have been a good story. The problem is, that Blumlein is not up to the task. He dumps page after page of exposition on us and it is boring. He attempts, in dialogue, to hint at complex relationships and personal histories filled with portent. The problem is that his dialogue is confusing and unclear, his hints are so vague they confuse rather than intrigue, and his puzzles—the asteroid's possible harboring of life, and the possibility of a breakthrough in rejuvenation drugs—are discussed in simplistic dialogue with no substantial technical information imparted, and no resolution at all of any of the issues.

For some reason, I finished this book. I am sorry I wasted my time even though I skimmed much of it. I hoped at least for an interesting answer to the asteroid question, some insight into an alien life form. I got nothing. You won't either. Avoid this one.

It has been years since I read a science fiction novella (or novel) that was as good in as many ways as This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

This is an immersive book–we are taken directly into a complex and unknown world with little expository explanation. I didn't know who Red and Blue were, nor why they were fighting a war in time. The descriptions of action were fuzzy at best. I almost gave up, and would have if the book was longer.

Then, subtly, slowly, I was drawn in to this curious epistolary relationship between Red and Blue, two major players on opposite sides of a generations long, galaxy spanning war in time.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is all about love and erudition and language and poetry and the obsession that drives two people in love under impossible circumstances. El-Mohtar and Gladstone make the book complex and poetic, literary and romantic. Their collaboration is perfect, their words matched to the tone and setting. Red and Blue riff off each other with perfectly constructed styles using metaphors and imagery with cultural and literary references. This epistolary novel is as complex in structure as the time strands that Red and Blue traverse and manipulate in their generations long war over interstellar distances.

Although the time war has little detail or explanation, it provides the connection between lovers, a challenge for them to overcome, and crucially, the structure for their redemption.

We feel deeply for Red and Blue and we feel their precarious situations amid the uncertainty they live in where time and worlds are mutable. They question their own motives and actions, and those of others, while regaling each other with romantic letters transmitted through subtle and abstruse steganography.

In alternating narrative strands and in the letters of Red and Blue, El-Mohtar and Gladstone build a world, they build lives, they build romance and they create magic.

Read it.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett turned out to be a very odd read. The book has received many glowing, high profile reviews, particularly for a first novel. Most reviewers have described the book as unusual in one way or another. I would agree.

Jessa Morton is the first person narrator of the story. She was raised by her mother and her taxidermist father along with her younger brother Milo, in Florida. Taxidermy is the common thread in the novel–it is her father's passion as well as the family livelihood. Jessa is groomed from a young age to help her father in the taxidermy shop and he favors her over Milo. From an early age, Jessa understands that she is gay and she is singularly attracted to Brynn, a girl her age. Jessa and Brynn become both friends and lovers as teenagers. Their relationship is complicated as Brynn also is involved with boys. Brynn eventually marries Milo, but Jessa and Brynn maintain their affair even through the marriage and children.

The story starts with the suicide of Prentice Morton, Jessa's father. He shoots himself in the head in the taxidermy shop and, knowing that Jessa will be the one to find him, leaves her a private note. We also learn that Brynn ran away a few years ago, leaving Milo, her children (Bastien and Lolee) and Jessa to wonder where she went and why.

The chapters of the novel occur in two timeframes. The first, with titles like Sus Scrofa–Feral Pig, take place in the past, with Jessa describing growing up with Brynn and Milo and her family. Chapters that are labeled with numbers take place in the present time of the novel, starting about a year after the suicide.

In the novel, Jessa deals with multiple issues. First, is her father's suicide and the note he left which asks her to take care of things. The full contents of the note are never fully disclosed. Instead, it becomes almost talismanic and Jessa uses it to attempt to understand or control the major issues in her life–her relationship with her father, her mother, her brother, and her lovers. The note remains mysterious and is full of power for Jessa. She feels it is her responsibility to follow the instructions in the note, even to her own detriment.

Jessa's life has been subtly controlled by her relationships with her father and with Brynn, her lover. Both have now deserted her, her father by suicide, Brynn by running away. Any remaining support system she has–her mother, Libby, and her brother, Milo, are dysfunctional and distant. Following her husband's suicide, Jessa's mother can only focus on prurient, pornographic art which consists of sexually posing taxidermy available to her around the house and at the shop. This angers and concerns Jessa. To Jessa, it is demeaning to her father's legacy and work, particularly because Libby portrays her dead husband as a participant in her stagings.

Milo floats through life after Brynn deserts him and their children, unable to focus on either his parental responsibilities or his work or personal hygiene. Milo and Jessa's relationship is close, but complicated by the intertwining of their relationships with Brynn and the fact that Brynn left them both.

Jessa's attempts at connecting with others (Lucinda, a love interest, for example) leave her dissatisfied and bereft as she is unable to define, connect with or feel her own grief. It is this grief, this dissatisfaction with life, that colors the entire narrative of the book and drives its tone using the primal process of taxidermy as its symbol. As the taxidermist deconstructs his subject and delves into the smells, the slime, the blood and guts of it, before reconstructing it with parts on hand and baling wire, so Jessa does with her life in the alternating chapters.

This emotional angst colors Jessa's descriptions of the world around her. Everything in Jessa's life, even things that are traditionally beautiful and joyful, are made grotesque and sad when Jessa describes them. For example: remembering Milo and Brynn's wedding, Jessa describes the flowers she and the other attendants hold:

We held flowers that attracted bugs. Clutching our bouquets, we swatted and let the petals fall in wilted clumps on the grass. It clouded up and threatened rain for over an hour, but the sky refused to break open.

This negative context wears on the reader and we despair, as the book goes on and on, that there is anything other than her father's fate–a gun to the head–awaiting Jessa. Unlike some others, I did not find absurd humor in Jessa's narrative, only sadness. Jessa seemed doomed to this distorted view of the world and the people in it and I really didn't want to read more about it.

Despite this, I continued reading and was glad I did. The rest of this review explains why, but reveals some detail about the ending.

Jessa attempts to control her destiny, but her narcissistic efforts result in tragedy. After her mother's prurient art work is destroyed, partly as a result of Jessa's actions, Jessa attempts to reconnect with her mother by showing her the suicide note from her father. Libby doesn't care and tears up the note. This angers Jessa and she initially separates herself even further from her mother. But, after a time, with her last connection to her father now destroyed, Jessa is able to see her life differently.In a moving scene, Jessa visits her mother, and finds her hiding in the bathroom, unkempt physically and nearly catatonic. She washes her mother's body as she would a child. The description of this is as clinically detailed and personal as her descriptions of deconstructing a dead animal's body for taxidermy. But from this clinical viewpoint comes loving kindness, and Jessa is transformed by it. The family's dog, Sir Charles, stuffed by Jessa's father and Libby's husband watches this symbolic cleansing occur, almost a participant. After wrapping her mother in a towel, Jessa takes her to the living room where she “turns on the tortoise”, a phrase her father used to describe turning on a lamp with a green shade so he could see more clearly. In this new light, Jessa and Libby redefine their relationship. They lay to rest the demons that have beset them both—Prentice and Brynn, father, husband, lover.It is this scene that saves the book. Arnett handles this deftly. She ties together all the themes and characters in her book tightly and creates an ending that is subtle, deep, and profound. Like taxidermy, life is messy and sometimes it stinks. But, if you can can see clearly what you learned in the deconstruction of the body, if you can use what is on hand to create from the destruction a new and lasting beauty, life can be good. Taxidermy preserves beauty. Love, whether lost or ongoing, preserves life.I initially gave the book a mediocre rating—around 60/100. But this book and its ending have stuck with me over the past two weeks and grown larger in my memory. Jessa's narrative of despair and dirt, of guts and gore, of sadness and loss, was necessary to make the ending as powerful as it was. The novel at times was a slog to get through—but the travails of the journey were necessary to make the end of the journey sweeter.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe is an interesting and fun space opera with a little bit of everything, including some irritating style quirks.

Sanda Greeve is a gunship pilot in the Ada Prime military. After being on defensive patrol near Icarion space, she suddenly finds herself awakened after being preserved in an evacuation pod, apparently after a space battle she doesn't remember. She has lost part of one leg. She finds herself aboard an Icarion (the enemy) AI Class Cruiser, The Light of Berossus The ship AI introduces himself as Bero. Bero tells Sanda that 230 years have passed after the Battle of Dralee in which Sanda's gunship was destroyed. As part of the battle, Ada Prime, Sanda's home planet was destroyed by a special weapon deployed by the Icarions.

230 years before, at the time of the Battle of Dralee, Sanda's younger brother, Biran, is a newly graduated Keeper. The Keepers are specially trained leaders of Ada Prime and have computer chips implanted in their skulls. The chips don't give them any special abilities, but rather contain encrypted data on the construction of Casimir Gates, the interstellar jump points that tie together the Prime Universe. This secret data allows the Primes to maintain control of interstellar space.

The remainder of the novel is written in chapters that alternate between Sanda's point of view and Biran's point of view, 230 years apart. We are also introduced to another group of characters, led by Jules, a young woman from the lower cast in the Prime Universe who works with a criminal gang living in lower class neighborhoods.

There are also interludes that give us two other points of view. The first is that of Alexandra Halston, an historical character who was the businesswoman who led Prime Corporation, which developed space commercially and built the first Casimir Gate. The history of the Prime Universe is dated from the development of the first Gate.

The second Interlude point of view is that of Callie Mera, Ada Prime's favorite newscaster. Callie does have an important role to play, but unless that role is significantly increased in sequels, Callie seems superfluous.

The velocity weapon of the title is Bero, who is an interstellar capable ramscoop ship. As a weapon, Bero can accelerate masses to relativistic velocities, thereby increasing their mass and making them dangerous projectiles. This is the edge Icarion uses in their opposition to the Gate monopoly the Primes hold.

The story hinges on Sanda's struggle for survival after being awakened on Bero, and on Biran's struggle to find his sister and save her, if she is still alive.

Sanda's struggle is the stuff of science fiction adventure–she is faced with lots of problems and has to be clever to solve them. But O'Keefe also provides a lot of twists and turns for Sanda, most of them interesting at least, and many of them pretty surprising. After being alone for some time, she is joined in her struggle for survival by another rescued soldier, Tomas. Tomas is an enigma and Sanda is not sure if she should trust him. Their relationship is well-developed and interesting.

Biran's story is a political one where he must work within the existing power structure of Ada Prime's ruling Protectorate of Keepers to be sure the possibility of Sanda's survival and her rescue is a high priority. Biran also fights against what he thinks is the Protectorate's mismanaged approach to the war with Icarion. As he seeks information about Sanda, Biran uncovers a variety of deep and significant secrets within the political power structure of the Protectorate.

Velocity Weapon is an enjoyable ride, although at times I found myself aware of the writer's manipulative ways. There are 80 chapters and six interludes in the book, and maybe they don't all end with cliffhangers, but most of them do, particularly in the last half. This is a bit overdone, but it is effective. O'Keefe keeps giving us more and more as the story goes on, but she effectively handles the complications (albeit with a few deus ex machinas thrown in) and uses most of her surprises to complicate and deepen the story.

O'Keefe adds interesting and well thought out plot twists and science fiction elements that kept me interested. She has constructed a universe where the science fiction elements (her space travel technology and where it came from, the Keepers and their secrets, what Jules and her fellow criminals discover and are caught up in) are an integral part of the plot. This gives the book a depth that most space opera no longer has for me. As a space opera, this book is a big success.

O'Keefe is good enough with her characters that I care about Sanda and Tomas and Biran. The motivations of their antagonists are subtle and complex and serve to expand the action and provide interest.

I want to follow the adventures of Sanda and Brian and others as they figure out what's really going on in their world and how to control it.

Much of this novel contains major surprises which I won't reveal as they would ruin the story. There are also myriad minor surprises and cliffhanger moments along the way, sometimes too many. But O'Keefe manages make it all hang together and and keeps the story coherent.

I really liked the book and am ready for volume two.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger is an interesting read and something different for Freudenberger. Lost and Wanted is written in the first person from the point of view of Helen Clapp, a well-known and respected physicist and a distinguished professor at MIT. Helen receives an unexpected and aborted phone call from her friend, Charlie, from whom she hasn't heard in a while. Two days later Helen receives a call from Charlie's husband, Terrence, telling her Charlie died–the day before Helen received the aborted call.

Subsequently, Helen receives and responds to occasional text messages from Charlie's phone, which Terrence informed her is missing. This establishes a supernatural element to the plot, one that is juxtaposed to Helen's strong belief in the science and reality of physics. But, as we learn through Helen's many digressions into her work as a physicist, physics and reality also have their strange, contradictory, and mysterious aspects–like quantum entanglement, gravity waves, and black holes. In this manner, Freudenberger presents three very different aspects of Helen. The most important of these is her life as a scientist and physicist, a characteristic that grounds her in logic, mathematics and the scientific method. The world is a logical place and can be understood if only one looks at it closely enough, Helen believes. The second aspect of Helen is her personal life–a somewhat messy, uncertain and fuzzy experience that she struggles with defining. Helen's third aspect is as a mother–Helen has an eight-year-old son, whom she raises alone, and who was conceived via an anonymous sperm donor.

The story proceeds in three areas as well. The first is the present time, in which Helen attempts to come to terms with the death of her friend Charlie. Helen and Charlie (who is black, Helen is white), met in college at Harvard, and were very close for many years. However, after the births of their children (Simmi, Charlie's daughter is one year older than Helen's son, Jack), they had less and less contact. Helen is strongly affected by Charlie's death and it leads her to take actions that make her uncomfortable, but which are important. She speaks at Charlie's memorial service, and she pushes for Terrence and Simmi to move into the apartment she has in her home.

Charlie's death also creates echoes from the past. In flashbacks, Helen reminisces extensively about her relationship with Charlie over the years. She remembers events and her reactions to them that cause regret, and realizes that there were many times when both she and Charlie missed opportunities to enhance and deepen their relationship–opportunities now gone forever. These thoughts cause Helen to muse about where she is in life now and what she wants in the future.

Helen also remembers in detail her long standing and one time romantic relationship with Neel Jonnal, who was also at Harvard. After their romantic relationship ended, Neel became Helen's collaborator on her signature contribution to physics–the Clapp-Jonnal model. Neel reappears in her life at nearly the same time that Charlie dies, providing Helen with a complicated triangle consisting of her attraction to Terrence, Neel's return, and her own uncertainty that raising Jack alone was a good choice.

The third story arc involves the melding of the past and the present in Helen's mind and emotions. Charlie is gone, but her family and her presence continue in Helen's life as she sees Charlie reflected in her daughter Simmi, as well as in the sorrow, anger, and persistence of Charlie's husband Terrence's attempts to help his daughter through the loss of her mother while at the same time navigating his own way through his grief.

In addition, Neel, her collaborator on the most important work of her career in physics, and her first love while in college, returns to Helen's life, moving to MIT from Cal Tech to pursue his research. This brings up the emotions of their failed relationship, complicated by the fact that Neel surprises her, first with the announcement that he will marry, then with the fact of his new wife's pregnancy. This is especially significant since one of the complications of their early relationship was that Neel did not want children and Helen did.

Throughout all of these narratives Helen's thoughts veer off topic frequently, into long explanations of the concepts of quantum and relativistic physics. These appear random, but they are not. They show us two things. First, these expositions of science are the essence of who Helen is–a rational and practical woman who finds solace in the predictability of science, but who, at the same time understands that science itself produces unpredictability, randomness, and mystery at its deepest levels–for example, when we enter the realm of quantum entanglement, or approach the event horizon of a black hole, or when relativistic effects create things like gravity waves.

These scientific asides provide the reader, and Helen, with a way of trying to understand how our lives and experiences are a mirror of the complexity of the physical world–how the active, ghostlike presence of Charlie is reflected by quantum entanglement (which Einstein claimed was “spooky action at a distance”), or how Neel's return to her life so many years later is like a gravity wave touching a detector on Earth billions of years after it was created by the faraway collision of two black holes–objects we can't even see directly.

But Freudenberger leads her readers down the garden path in her novel by presenting the text messages from Charlie in a such a mysterious manner. Because this is a trope from many a lesser novel, we at first think Freudenberger's novel may be like them. We think we may be reading about supernatural events and this is misleading. It is not what the story is about and it minimizes the effectiveness of what Freudenberger is really about. Helen doesn't really believe the ghost of Charlie is sending them, but we are left with this idea for much too long in the story.

There are also times in the novel when Freudenberger presents the reader with what are clearly scenes filled with portent. But for me, these are too hazy and I am left only with uncertainty and confusion. Her metaphors and imagery don't resonate in my mind or provide me with any sense of deeper understanding–they are only complex and unintelligible.

So I am left with mixed feelings about Lost and Wanted. I enjoyed the book, and I particularly enjoyed Freudenberger's forays into physics and all its mysteries. The story is well told and her characters interesting and complex. But I find myself wanting to forget the almost supernatural ending with Helen's daydream that conflates Neel and Charlie warming Helen's freezing body and Simmi's apparent ghostwriting of a message in the data log at the LIGO lab. When I read these, I expected an ending that would make sense to me and pull together all the people, the times, and the events of the story into one metaphysical denouement that would expand my spirit and leave me with a sense that this was a completed experience. I really expected this of Freudenberger since she had such control of her story and her characters. Instead, I was left confused and empty.

This is probably my lack, but still.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a work of depth and perception unlike any novel I have ever read. It is a Bildungsroman, a very complex and personal one in which two very different coming of age stories are intertwined.

The first story is Connell's, a young man who in high school is a popular athlete and casually brilliant student. Connell comes from working class family with little money and no social standing. The second story is Marianne's, whose family is very well off, who is not popular in school, but is also intelligent and a good student. Connell's mother, Lorraine, works as a housekeeper for Marianne's family.

The story takes place in Ireland over a period of four years, starting when Connell and Marianne are in high school in a small town, and continues through their first years at Trinity College in Dublin. From the moment they meet when Connell picks up his mother at Marianne's house, both Connell and Marianne feel a deep attraction. This attraction drives the narrative with a force that is both engaging and relentless. Rooney's prose and her intimate narrative of the thoughts and actions of her characters draw us into the emotional world of Connell and Marianne, and we can't get out.

This is not an easy book. The characters are so real, their interactions so deeply personal, heartfelt, and sometimes cringeworthy that we find ourselves at one moment wincing with embarrassment and at the next exalted by a deeply personal insight. But even though Connell and Marianne feel they know the other better than they know themselves, simple things cause misunderstandings and the novel becomes an emotional roller coaster, much like Connell and Marianne's relationship. It seems inevitable, even as their social roles transform, that they must be together. Over time, they are and then they aren't and then they are again. Each of them grows and changes significantly over time, but there is one constant–the depth and importance of their connection, or perhaps, addiction, to each other.

The scope of Rooney's story feels narrow at first, but it becomes expansive as we learn how Connell and Marianne struggle into adulthood and move toward and away from each other. As they grow, their personalities solidify in unexpected ways that lead to conflicts and challenges, both personal and relational, that they must face and overcome.

The ending is the weakest part of the novel, particularly on first reading. After the emotional complexity appears resolved, suddenly Rooney thrusts us back into another cycle of their relationship and calls into question the accommodations that Connell and Marianne have made for each other. After more careful reading the ending is consistent, but it does not leave the reader with closure or satisfaction and so it disappoints given how effective the rest of the novel is.

Even so, Normal People is an exceptional book, an engrossing experience that is impossible to put down. It is compelling, not in the manner of a thriller, but because we care about Connell and Marianne as if we are them. Connell and Marianne are “normal people” and we are better for having known them.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel is the final installment of the Themis Files trilogy. The first book was Sleeping Giants, the second was Waking Gods.

In Only Human, Rose, Vincent, Eva (Vincent's ten year old daughter by Kara Resnick), and General Eugene Govender, have been transported to the home planet of the creators of the giant robots after the events of Waking Gods. As with the other two books of the trilogy, the book is epistolary—the story consists of a sequence of documents or interviews of the characters.

Only Human is a quick, breezy read. Chronologically, we skip back and forth between the time Rose, Vincent and Eva spend on Esat Ekt, the home planet of the Ekt, the builders of the robots, and the present time of the novel, which takes place on Earth, after the three have been transported back home in one of the giant robots, Themis.

Neuvel has a style that gives immediacy to his characters as the point of view switches frequently from document to document in the epistolary style. We slowly learn how Rose, Vincent and Eva end up back on Earth, and more details about the political situation on Earth. Neuvel occasionally dazzles with interesting perspectives on the cultural and political situations he has created on Esat Ekt and on Earth. But these deep insights are not enough to give the novel the depth necessary to make it significant. Neuvel attempts to define the driving cultural and political forces on Esat Ekt, but doesn't succeed. He doesn't quite make me believe in his world, particularly Esat Ekt, and the narrative becomes trivial.

Similarly, the events on Earth and Vincent's and Eva's actions within them are unrealistic and without sufficient motivation. Neuvel creates a complex situation in the conflict between Vincent and his now grown daughter Eva, which seems portentous and which is intertwined with the political rivalries of nations. But neither Vincent nor Eva has anything invested in the political sides they end up fighting for. Sides are chosen for them, or occur by happenstance—they are not the agents of their choices and again the resulting conflict becomes trivial.

Rose is not engaged in any of this—she is distant from it, and from most events in the novel. She longs to return to a normal life, to abdicate the pressure and responsibility of the position events and her own actions in the previous books have thrust upon her. But Neuvel ignores this and uses Rose as the agent who resolves the world's conflicts even though she has done her best to abdicate her responsibility and authority. Worse, the solution Rose implements is Machiavellian at best and cruel and inhuman at worst.

I enjoyed the book and wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it, but if you expect a satisfying resolution to the situation Neuvel has created in the first two books of the trilogy, I fear you will be disappointed like I was.

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman is marketed as a “noir gem” and with blurbs from prestigious authors and publications. Sunburn is a formula story. I was drawn to the book after reading an interesting article about Lippman and her books.

In Sunburn, everything is mysterious, from the characters, Polly Costello, a mother who leaves her husband and daughter for mysterious reasons, and Adam Bosk, the private detective hired to follow her and find where she is hiding a supposedly large sum of money.

The story switches between Polly's and Adam's viewpoints. In each chapter (there are forty-six of them), we are teased with a bit more revelation about each character's secrets. Polly is hiding a complex history of mistakes behind various deceptions and playing a waiting game with an unknown goal. Adam is a reluctant investigator who finds himself attracted to his target, Polly, and even more conflicted that usual as a result.

At first, this teasing is effective and makes for compelling reading. But, for me, it grew old as each tease became less interesting and as Polly and Adam entered into a relationship where neither was truthful in the least, while still maintaining, in their thoughts, that they were truly in love. I started to lose interest but I kept reading, hoping for a final revelation and resolution that would allow me to feel better about these two people whom I no longer trusted, now had no sympathy for, and no longer liked.

It never happened. The revelations didn't feel significant enough to justify the long tease and there was no resolution, only an almost off-camera deus ex machina that is just an excuse for a final passage explaining another tease.

The book was frustrating and I am not particularly happy I spent the time to finish it.

It has a main character named Georgie McCool–how cool is that?

It has time travel, of sorts, for those of us intrigued by science fictional tropes, but it isn't technical wizardry science fiction that would ruin the mood for others.

It has pugs, two of them, Porky and Petunia. It has pug puppies, newborns nestled in the clothes dryer.

It has a rom-com ending that isn't sickly sweet, but perfect, with enough ambiguity to make one consider life carefully.

It is thoughtful and funny and marvelous and you read it word by word careful not to miss anything and you are sad when it ends, but only because it ends, not because of the way it ends.

It's a nearly perfect book. It is a perfect book, except for the “discussion questions” at the end. Don't read the fucking discussion questions!

The Red: First Light

Linda Nagata 2013

This was a very good hard sf novel. At first one would be tempted to call it military sf, but that is not accurate in my opinion. What's the difference? Everything that separates good writing from formula and meaningful provocative sf from old tropes rehashed.

Told in the present tense, the narrative is compelling from the beginning. It is filled with action scenes that have meaning rather than existing just for excitement. Part of the way Nagata accomplishes this is through character development. Each actor is unique and the action scenes develop this uniqueness and make us care about the players. We are fascinated by the technology, excited by the action and interested in what motivates each character.

In short order we are introduced to the main themes of the book: the mysterious voice that Lt. Shelley hears and which saves him and his squad numerous times; the cultural crisis of wars fought for economic stimulus and promoted by large defense contractors; the political corruption that this culture creates.

It is these themes and these characters that drive the narrative and that narrative ties unexpected directions. This is the greatest aspect of the novel–we cannot predict the events, but when they occur, we realize their importance to both the characters and the themes. There are big ideas and concepts here, not in the sense of Niven's Ringworld, but in the sense of where is our world headed and do we want to passively go along for the ride.

Lt. Shelley does not, and neither do the members of his squad, Sgt. Vasquez and private Ransom, who refers to Shelley as King David because he thinks Shelley listens to the voice of god. Neither does Lissa, Shelley's girlfriend, although she is a very reluctant participant.

This is an exemplary novel that succeeds on three levels: enough action for anyone; an important sf theme that engages a cautionary sense of wonder; and characters who breathe with emotional life and death.

The review is available at The Gray Planet.

Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, by Caroline Paul, illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton, is a short, kind of cute, illustrated book about Caroline Paul's cats, Tibula and Fibula. The cats are litter mates, but very different. Paul is injured when she crash lands an experimental plane, and she endures a long convalescence in her home, cared for by Wendy MacNaughton. While Paul is convalescing, Fibby disappears for a few weeks and then returns unharmed. Depressed and physically limited by her injuries, Paul becomes obsessed with discovering where Fibby had spent his time and why.
Paul's obsession results in consulting psychics, pet detectives, and using GPS receivers and cameras attached to Fibby's collar, in an attempt to find where and with whom Fibby spent the missing time. It's all kind of cute and Paul does try to put some meat into the story by associating her obsession with Fibby's escapades with the depression that accompanies her convalescence and by showing us that the resolution of these problems requires engagement with her neighbors—actually talking to people and being nice. But although it rings true, I just didn't care much. I only finished the book because it was so short and the pages flew by filled with MacNaughton's nice illustrations.
Forty years ago, when I had my own tomcat who disappeared for days at a time, I might have cared a little more, but now, not so much.