Cibola Burn, by James S. A. Corey

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm in the process of catching this series up. This book seems to be the real turning point when we settle into a long running franchise.

The book takes a long time to find its stride. Setting up the immigration/colonization situation and the natural disaster component takes several hundred pages. But once it gets going the main characters settle into their familiar, explicitly explained roles and the action gets going.

The authors are putting forward a basically positive view of humanity, with the crew of the Rocinante making the best of the situation through their faith that most everyone will, given enough chances, do the right thing. Not everyone does, but enough to save the situation.

As noted, the main characters are predictably themselves. The side characters are somewhat weak--Elvi and Basia are facets of the main characters. Havelock is sort of interesting in that he is a reflection of who he's following, and he knows it, but again, this is explicitly stated. The series is a reflection of its main character. James Holden is known as a man without subtexts, and so is this series. I'm still enjoying it, though.



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Abaddon's Gate, by James S. A. Corey

Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm catching this series up--read Leviathan's Gate early on, then didn't pursue it. As space opera it's quite excellent--your pulse races and settles all the way through, and you never lose interest. But I have to say this did feel like the middle of a long march, rather than a new exciting installment. Jim Holden as the hero is kind of a parody of a wooden hero, and the books kind of wink at him. "He made his reputation as a man with no subtexts". In this book he has a sort of female counterpart in Anna V., that minister on the cultural mission.

This book spends a lot of time on the meaning of justice and revenge, and not quite as much on technical subjects. The Ring is out there scaring them all--is it a gate? Is it a space of its own? The technical side is mostly about the ships that navigate the expanse, especially the converted generation ship Nauvoo.

The Ring is pretty much in Fantasy territory, and the authors are comfortable there. At the very end we get a sense of how much bigger the Expanse is going to get, which is interesting. All in all it's more than enough to keep me going in the series.



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Drive, by James S. A. Corey

Drive by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As short stories that are small part of a larger series go, this is a really good one. We get some good character setup, and then the whammy.
(view spoiler)[The story spends most of its time developing the character of Solomon Epstein, inventor of the spaceship drive that makes the Expanse possible. We see what motivates him to create it, and his relationship with his wife. And all that is disposed of due to the success of the experiment. He grows quite philosophical at the end, thinking about the great future he is making possible but isn't going to get to see. It reads very well. (hide spoiler)]
It's more of a piece for people that have already read the series, but that's fine. If you liked Leviathan Wakes you should spend about half an hour and catch this up.



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The Hidden Girl, by Ken Liu

The Hidden Girl was nominated for a Locus award last year and is part of The Book of Swords anthology, edited by Gardner Dozios.  The protagonist is a daughter of a high ranking noble in China, one just under the warlords that run the country in lieu of the emperor.  A wandering Buddhist monk, who is really a head of a supernatural girls' combat academy, steals her away against her will for training.

The story is pretty much set in a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon universe, with young women fighting while swinging on vines.  Their special power comes from being able to go into a "space that is not a space", and access our three dimensions as though through a fourth spatial one.  At heart, it's a superhero birth story.  Decently fun to read, with a self contained plot but it still doesn't stand alone all that well.  3 stars from me.

Agents of Dreamland, by Caitlin Kiernan

Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I guess horror just is not my thing. This tiny book seems to set out to push all the cliche buttons that can be reached. Fear of fungus, rampantly layered conspiracy theories, "agents" so thoroughly hard boiled that their blood would not run if cut (except it would, because horror). I almost thought it was a parody. It's grammatically correct and all, but as much as I try to like Kiernan's fiction I just can't bring myself to do it.



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Ka: Dar Oakley In the Ruins of Ymr, by John Crowley

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There's a lot of strong elements in this book that got me to finish it. Dar Oakley is a great character, a Crow who ends up with a fair amount of People rubbing off on him--he is aware of it and concerned the whole time. Crowley told the tale from the perspective of someone listening to Dar Oakley tell his story, so it's a Crow perspective filtered through a human, and he gets that right. The prose is lovely, it may be just a bit old fashioned now but it's wonderful to read. The story of Dar Oakley's long, long life is wonderful and mysterious.
(view spoiler)[There are hints that the storyteller is living in apocalyptic times--the world seems to be in active but not violent collapse. Environmental. Timely, almost too much so now. (hide spoiler)]

But oh, the pace. There's a whole lot of words here for what is actually accomplished, and even though they are good words they are too many. This book could be about a third shorter and be better. The action does not really build to a conclusion, so the interest in the book is in how it rolls out, and I began to tire about halfway through. The payoff was just not adequate for so much reading. Overall I'm glad I read it, but I am left wanting at least some of my life back.



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Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor

Home by Nnedi Okorafor

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Okorafor's Binti series is equal parts fascinating and frustrating for me. Her approach to technology is completely fresh, and I came away understanding it better in this story. What at first seems fantastical is given scientific explanation later. There are stronger hints that the time is post-apocalyptic, or at least that people came to some very different understanding of how they wanted to relate to technology--possibly it was a way to survive? A telling quote: "That was back before people had mobile phones!". So there's a connection between today's phone and the story's "astrolabe". The setting of technology in African culture is fascinating and brings something very different to SF.

But as a story it's really choppy and abbreviated. Binti decides to go home to do her pilgrimage "because it's time" without preamble. It's not like an abbreviated story, more like we're jumping from part to part without a lot of it being told. The writing is kind of YA and not in a real wonderful way. What's frustrating is I do not recall this being so much of an issue in Who Fears Death. That book had its own problems but it was clearly a work for adults and explored large themes. The Binti series wants to go there, but there's just not enough book.



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