Caliban's War, by James S. A. Corey

Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I first read Leviathan Wakes back in 2013 when it was nominated for major awards, and have not revisited the series since then. Just came back to it. It's great as a late night read, because it does not make you work too hard and it's fast-paced so you stay awake. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will continue to catch the series up at some point.

I'll leave the plot summaries to others. When I read a SF book several years after it came out I like to note what the authors were anticipating. Smartphones had not consumed us in 2012 the way they have now, but the authors and others saw it coming. But the phrasing is kind of awkward--the characters in the novels all carry "hand terminals" that seem to have the same function as smartphones. I'd bet a good bottle of scotch that, for as far into the future as we actually carry them in our hands, we will call them "phones", because it's such a simple word and carries the history of large-scale person-to-person communication with it. Even though phones are busy subsuming all other media (and tools) into themselves.



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Company Town, by Madeline Ashby

Company Town by Madeline Ashby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I came across this refreshing piece from the 2016 Locus Awards listings. While it didn't win it was a good effort and an entertaining read. The protagonist, Hwa, has Sturge-Weber syndrome, which comes with a large port-wine stain on the affected side of the face. This comes up over and over in the book--in the narrative one gets a little tired of it, until you think about how people with facial deformities are actually viewed and what it's like to go through life with one. The central trope in the book--a "clean" protagonist in a world of highly augmented people, who overcomes odds to do better than the augmented ones--is one we've seen several times in SF. So are highly stratified oligarchies and, well, company towns. This book doesn't break a lot of ground there, and the ending is somewhat weird and contrived, but in between there's a lot of good gritty humor. Hwa has learned how to grind her way through life, and it makes the people around her like her and want to help her more than she knows. This gratitude element is very subtly carried off and makes it worth getting through the somewhat spare narration and plot softness. I enjoyed it all the way through.



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The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I just read this, coming to it after it's been out for some time. In addition to all its other accolades it was second in the Locus Awards science fiction novel category--that's how I found it. Mostly it's an alternate history, with a very near resemblance to the real thing.

I am not sure what to think. A lot of important critics like this book, giving it a Pulitzer is a pretty big deal. Maybe it's the feeling that I'm supposed to like it. There's some good writing here, I found Cora's introspections more meaningful than some reviewers did. Partly that would be because early on I let go of the notion that the characters would have authentic period voices. Colson Whitehead is living now, during the rise of the Right and of Black Lives Matter, and his characters seem like the hardest, most extreme and most self-aware versions of current activist-type people. It's a harsh, tell-it-like-it-is novel so he's getting points for that.

It's not the sort of book you actually like. But if it were put together better it would have more impact. I'm with many of the more disappointed reviewers--it's hard to engage with the characters, they are closer to caricatures and rather thin. The shocking violence gets the point across about the times and the very clear way in which white settlers took what they wanted from anyone in their path. But in the end I was pretty remote from it.



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