“Titan’s Tears” by Chad Lester

Unfortunately, this wasn’t for me, and I stopped reading a third of the way through.

I wish I could say what the book was about - but it eludes me, even though I’ve read a full third of it. There are two major threads: Belle has a slightly mysterious background and goes to work for the mysterious Sophia, CEO of the mysterious Ecclestone Evolution, who are doing some mysterious work. It’s a grab-bag of future tech in a callous and unfeeling world: AI that’s “orders of magnitude” more powerful than a human brain, life-extending medical breakthroughs, bringing extinct animals back to life, lack of ethics or any kind of oversight, etc; and then there is Seth, a downtrodden worker just trying to make his way in a callous and unfeeling world, after a string of personal tragedies, while everyone’s jobs are being replaced by machines and there doesn’t appear to be any employment law.

Presumably these two threads come together later in the book.

There were a few reasons why I decided not to continue with this book, but overall it’s because my lack of engagement with any of the characters, coupled with a writing style that I found to be a distracting obstacle to my enjoyment, outweighed my curiosity about what was going on.

The writing style includes a lot of exposition - we’re told about what people are thinking and feeling, rather than allowing it to unfold through the actions and reactions of the characters. For me, this contributed significantly to my lack of engagement. But then suddenly there are pages of unbroken direct dialog between two characters - just line after line of quoted speech for page after page. I lost track of who was speaking several times. Then we’re back to the ponderous exposition again.

The pacing is also extremely inconsistent. The storyline around Belle and Sophia is almost glacially slow. For chapter after chapter very little happens beyond the drip-feed of mysterious goings-on at Ecclestone Evolution (did I mention that it was mysterious?). Every so often a nugget of what’s going on is revealed, but this feels like the author is dragging it out, presumably to create suspense and intrigue, but I found it transparent and irritating. And then Seth’s storyline is at express pace - hardly has he navigated one major or traumatic life event, than he’s negotiating the next. And while there is tragedy in his story, the whirlwind of plot doesn’t allow the time or space for any kind of emotional development or engagement.

The author seems to have some broad brush political opinions about corporate behaviour, which are ladled on in big dollops in both Seth’s storyline and Belle/Sophia’s - and it’s not clear whether these would have eventually become central to the plot, or whether the author just has a bit of an axe to grind and is using this book as a platform. And at one point, one of the characters who has a history of mental illness is referred to as “backwards” by one of the other characters. So perhaps I’ll take the author’s kind offer to bestow the benefit of his opinions on me, and leave it at the door.

Kthxbye.

Thank you #NetGalley and the author for the free review copy of #TitansTears in exchange for an honest review - for which I also apologise. All opinions are, clearly, my own.

My rating: ★☆☆☆☆

NetGalley review

"Equal Rites" by Terry Pratchett

In a world where the number 8 is magical, the eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard. Enter Eskarina (Esk), who inconveniently comes along as the eighth daughter of an eighth son, and “everybody knows there’s no such thing as a female wizard”.

I absolutely loved this. OK, so this is an “underdog makes good” story, and the broad strokes of the plot will come as no surprise (Esk can only be trained as a wizard in the Unseen University - a famously misogynistic organisation that has never admitted women. I wonder what will have happened by the end of the story?) But the characters are an absolute joy, the plot and pacing are solid, the development of Discworld lore is fascinating, imaginative, witty, rich, and just very rewarding as world-building - especially in the knowledge of the pay-off in the 30+ books in the series.

I’m always slightly nervous when one of the main characters in a story is a child. But Esk doesn’t suffer from the unsophisticated naivety that could have made the story a chore. While the naivety is there by necessity, Esk still brings a richness and sophistication to the story telling through the inherent and intuitive understanding she has of her magical inheritance. This lifts it from being the predictable YA coming of age tale that I feared it might be.

And Granny Weatherwax is clearly a star in the making. I get the sense from reviews of later Discworld stories that her character development is something to look forward to.

Pratchett’s writing is an absolute delight. Of course.

My rating: ★★★★★

"Dandelion" by Sabir Pirzada

This graphic novel is a collection of ten short stories set in a world where outcasts and the dispossessed get to live their lives as “exiles” on floating capsules, “Dandelions”, with all of their living requirements met… except that they can never again land on solid ground.

This is an ambitious concept - the creation of a two tier society (in this case, as literal is it is figurative) caused by the pressures of climate change and job losses through automation. And it tries to pack a lot in: the psychological and societal impact of creating and underclass of people who are forced to live separately from the rest of society, the impact and opportunities that this will provide for criminality and surveillance, and the adjustments and sacrifices that normal people and families would have to make. Woven through this is a thread of the supposed inventor of Dandelion, Jen Nakamuto, and her reflections and regrets over the impact that the Dandelions have had.

I was looking forward to reading this. It should have been great. Unfortunately for me, it fell short of the mark. I think this is mostly due to how short each story was: ten stories in 120 pages barely allows each story to start developing before it hurtles towards its conclusion. Each story felt rushed and, leaving little space for emotional development of any of the characters or situations, with the result that I found it very difficult to engage with any of it.

This is such a shame, as the concept has the richness and potential for a novel length treatment. And there is such a collection of artistic talent; using different artists for each of the stories showcases a broad range of excellent artwork, and the change in visual style matched the change on point-of-view for each story.

Despite all of this, two things did stand out. Running between the main stories are snippets of the “Excerpt from the Statosphere podcast” interview with Jen Nakamuto. This set of reflections of the supposed inventor of the Dandelions, rendered in black and white was a nice counterpoint to the action in the main stories. And I found “The Bird” poignant and emotional (the fact that it had a talking octopus and lizard that was aware that its existence was within a graphic novel also helped). For me, though, these were just highlights in what felt overall like a missed opportunity.

Thank you #NetGalley and Image Comics for the free review copy of #Dandelion in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★☆☆☆

NetGalley review

“Service Model” by Adrian Tchaikovsky

What do you get when you throw a whole bunch of pop culture and literature references into an irreverent buddy-movie story starring a vehemently non-self-aware robot and a plucky sidekick trying to find meaning in a dystopian wasteland?

You get a fun, fast paced adventure, with a bit of existential angst, and some robot librarians. You can also use it as a light-hearted vehicle to ponder the nature of self-awareness, and the duties and responsibilities we have around the use and nature of AI; it’s there if you want it, or you can just enjoy the ride.

Charles, the domestic service robot, is forced to find alternative employment after the untimely death of his Master. His quest takes him through the remains of a collapsing human civilisation, where the groups of surviving people and robots that he meets present an array of temptations and dangers that he must navigate in his search for meaningful employment.

The story is in five parts, and is almost episodic, in that each part roughly corresponds to our heroes getting into trouble, navigating the jeopardy (while moving the narrative forward), and then escaping to the next part of their quest. Each part also has a thematic or stylistic flavour, signposted by the loosely disguised part titles (the interpretation of which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader), which was a nice touch, for those that I got.

Does it have flaws? Well… maybe. In the early parts of the book, I wasn’t convinced about the inflexibility of the AI to cope with novel situations. The robots are sophisticated enough to be able to cope with the ambiguity and assumptions involved in acting as a valet: organising their Master’s clothing, activities, and travel, for example. But those same robots are simultaneously incapable of dealing with the exact same levels of ambiguity in other contexts, or are debilitatingly literal - for example one robot had been waiting for years to greet some guests that it had been told would arrive, but had not been told how long to wait for them.

And there were a couple of pinch points in the plot when our heroes got themselves out of trouble in a way that made me say “Really?!” to myself.

But, for me at least, these are eminently forgivable. The inability of the robots to think outside the box is such an important thread that binds the plot together, that I was quite happy to put aside my mild incredulity (and, to be honest, if you can’t put this aside then you won’t enjoy the book). And the occasional opportunistic escape from trouble kept the plot moving, and contributed to the episodic nature of the story - which I found enjoyably reminiscent of old “Saturday morning cinema” sci-fi like Flash Gordon (but that might just be me).

The story is packed with popular culture references - and those that I spotted made me smile (”2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Star Wars” and “The Wizard of Oz” are all in there, for example). I’m sure there were many that I missed - in the same way that I didn’t get the references for all of the part titles - but that doesn’t matter. It annoys me when an author tries to show off with this kind of thing, but that wasn’t the case here - it was just a bit of extra fun.

I also really liked the tone. There is a witty irreverence that suits my preference, but in this case I also found it reminiscent of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett in places, which I really enjoyed.

So, despite the flaws, a solid 5 starts. I can see myself revisiting this - for the humour, the story, the robot librarians, and the philosophical exploration of the nature of free will and self awareness.

Thank you #NetGalley and Pan MacMillan / Tor for the free review copy of #ServiceModel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★★

NetGalley review

“Quarantine Notes: Aphorisms on Morality and Mortality“ by Yahia Lababidi

I don’t really have a frame of reference for reviewing this. I’m not familiar with Lababidi’s works, nor aphorisms in general, but I found this collection inspirational. My thoughts are more eloquently summarised in the Afterword by Andrew Benson Brown:

Yahia Lababidi […] somehow manages not to be trite or shallow in his appraisals, and even to be the opposite. His wisdom has an ancient quality that speaks to the present about its future.

…and…

This book […] encourages one to contemplate brevity by quarantining Lababidi’s sayings, mirroring the condition of their creation. Lababidi himself puts it in a way that nicely reflects the volume’s organization: “Aphorisms are the sushi of literature.” A large bite, carefully prepared by a master chef, delicately savored. Wrapped in white space like rice, each piece’s placement on the page helps cleanse the palate like a slice of ginger, preparing one for the next bite. Though readers will inevitably douse their sushi in the soy sauce of their peculiar, accidentally-acquired prejudices, the author would encourage light dipping so as to not overwhelm the natural flavor of each insight.

Lababidi is clearly very spiritual, and this comes across in many of the aphorisms. While I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself that way, I found that even those aphorisms that had an overt spiritual nature still spoke to me in a way that I found relevant.

I took a long time to read this, as I wanted to savour each morsel. And I’m glad I did. And I will almost certainly revisit it.

My rating: ★★★★☆

“Merlin’s Gun” by Alastair Reynolds

The fourth and final story in the Merlin chronology, this short story was actually written first. This sees Merlin at the end of his quest for a weapon that will be capable of defeating the Huskers - an enemy that would destroy the entirety of humankind.

The story is told from the perspective of Sora, a young woman that Merlin saves after she is left alone in suspended animation after a Husker attack. Due to time dilation of relativistic travel, and the existence of suspended animation technology, Merlin has become a millennia-old legend in Sora’s time. A legend who has now appeared as potential saviour, at a time when the long-standing war with the Huskers has been going very badly.

Oh, how I wish this was at least the size of a novella. There is the barest of setup, followed by an extended reveal, that hints at Merlin’s extended lifetime, the nature and purpose of the weapon, and even a surprising revelation about the Huskers themselves. This left too much unexplored for my liking - and, while the ending of the story, and the saga, was satisfying, it left my frustrated that there is a rich vein of material that could have been mined for a much meatier experience.

It’s been an enjoyable series, though, and Merlin’s Gun rounds it off nicely. It gives me a good feeling about Alastair Reynolds’ other work.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

“The Iron Tactician” by Alastair Reynolds

The Iron Tactician is the third novelette in the Merlin chronology, and is a fast-paced plot-driven story featuring space battles, moral choices, and some surprising royal ancestry.

Merlin’s syrinx is damaged. This is a navigation device left by the builders of the Waynet - an ancient network of inter-stellar conduits. Without his syrinx, and access to the Waynet, Merlin cannot continue on his long standing quest to find a weapon that will defeat the Huskers, who threaten to eradicate the whole of humanity.

Merlin finds out about a star system in which two factions have been fighting a long lasting war. One faction has a syrinx, and Merlin finds himself negotiating with them: he must help recover a stolen tactical computer - the Iron Tactician - in exchange for their syrinx.

There are themes here around the morality of attempting a short, sharp military victory - along with some exploration of whether that’s ever really possible. There are echoes of the previous story, Minla’s Flowers, here, where similar themes were explored. And, of course, these questions are pertinent to real life conflicts that have happened in recent memory.

However, the story primarily revolves around some plot-heavy military conflict, and it’s exciting stuff. When a book gets particularly exciting, I have an annoying (to me) habit of starting to skip forwards - so keen to find out what happens next. And I found myself having to control this habit several times as the pace picked up in the second half of the story.

The was an enjoyable episode in the Merlin series, although with more action and less depth than the first two stories, Hideaway and Minla's Flowers. And while Reynolds writes the action sequences very well, I preferred the more thoughtful content in the first two books. The series concludes in the next book, Merlin's Gun.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

“The Discworld Graphic Novels” by Terry Pratchett

This covers the first two Discworld books, in graphic novel form. It was exactly what I wanted it to be - a fun, somewhat abridged, adaptation of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. I’ve read the original novels before, albeit a long time ago, so I was already familiar with the characters, and they were brought to life quite well. It was a quick and easy way for me to revisit the first two books, with the extra enjoyment of seeing it all as a graphic novel.

I found myself dipping into the novels a few times, just out of curiosity about the accuracy of the adaptation (was Liessa really dressed like that?), and was always pleasantly surprised - but pleasantly surprised in two ways: firstly, that the adaptation seemed very accurate (yes, she really was dressed like that), but also that the richness, humour, and fun from the books was all coming from Pratchett’s writing. The graphic novel does a decent enough job of, well… telling the story graphically - and is certainly an excellent illustration of the original novels. And while the abridgement suited The Colour of Magic quite well, as the book is a series of short, relatively unrelated episodes, The Light Fantastic felt a little disjoint in places. The thing I found must surprising about my experience of reading the graphic novels, though, was that it made me want to read the original books.

So this graphic novel gave me exactly what I wanted: it was a quick and easy way to revisit those first two novels, to kick off my intended journey through the entire series. And it was nice to see the cowardice of Rincewind, the naivety of Twoflower, the unstoppable tenacity of the Luggage, and the unlikely romance between Cohen and Bethan, all played out for me again.

Has this whetted my appetite for the rest of Discworld? Yes, definitely. Would I read them in graphic novel form if they were all available as such? Probably not.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

"Minla's Flowers" by Alastair Reynolds

Minla’s Flowers is the second short story in the chronology of the Merlin series by Alastair Reynolds. Where the first story, Hideaway, was plot heavy, Minla’s Flowers is more philophical - covering issues around influence, interference, and self determination in a society.

Merlin’s ship is damaged, and he seeks help on a nearby little-known planet, Lecythus, which was colonised by humans in the distant past, but has been out of touch with broader human society ever since.

The two factions on the planet have been at war for decades - with a technology level equivalent to early 20th century Earth. On top of this, Merlin identifies an extinction level event that will occur in about 70 years - an event that he knows they will not have the technology to avoid.

The story that unfolds explores the morality of interference, and follows similar themes used in, for example, Star Trek’s “Prime Directive” (a directive against interference with non-spacefaring peoples). The technology to avoid extinction could also swing the balance of power in the war, and the story touches on what actions can be justified in order to achieve a greater goal.

This makes for a thoughtful reading experience, and I enjoyed the moral ambiguity throughout the story, and in the ending.

My rating: ★★★★☆

(Side note: This story could probably be read stand-alone, but the first short story, Hideaway, did a lot of world building that this story uses as background and context for Merlin. It can be read as part of the collection “Beyond the Aquila Rift”, where it is presented stand-alone. It can also be read in the “Zima Blue” collection, where it is presented alongside Hidaway and Merlin’s Gun).