FATHER'S DAY FAST ONES: Two new Adrian Tchaikovsky novels, SHROUD and BEE SPEAKER

BEE SPEAKER (Dogs of War #3)
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Head of Zeus—an AdAstra Book (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the Arthur C. Clarke award winner, Adrian Tchaikovsky, comes the third instalment of the DOGS OF WAR science fiction series, a future where genetically engineered “Bioforms” have inherited not the Earth, but the Solar System.

The end of the world has been and gone.

There was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts.

But where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees – an outlawed distributed intelligence—survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative.

Fast forward to today. A signal—'For the sake of what once was. We beg you. Help.'—reaches Mars.

How could they refuse? A consortium of Martian work crews gather the resources for a mission: a triumphal return to the blue-green world of their ancestors. And now here they are—three hundred million kilometres from home.

And it has all already gone horribly wrong.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This one will require you to go to the bookstore. It is worth it. If Dad's already read the first two books, it's a no-brainer...of course he wants this one. If he is a fan of Author Adrian's work, getting all three is a slightly pricier alternative, but about 97% probability of being a huge hit.

If he hasn't read the first two novels, though, this is set in their medium-term future, and requires no knowledge not given in the narrative here to understand what's going on. I've read both previous books and didn't feel it was a huge advantage; more a mild fillip of some extra fun to be had.

Four Martians respond to the Old Homestead's pretty vague plea for help. The story has chapters the way a ham has calories...lots and lots and all distributed in tasty hunks of richly marbled language. There are multiple PoVs, nine in all. Each one is moving the story...about the way the kindest intentions get deeply enmeshed in very challenging realities of human fallibility...and oftentimes in ways that aren't supposed to be funny, but are.

If your Dad is like me, deeply suspicious of any kind of AGI that pretends to infallibility or omniscience, then this is a great series to hook him on. Nothing about Bees, the Martian distributed consciousness (AGI rebranded), long ago banished from the severely collapsing Earth, is infallible, though it is good-hearted. The crisis of climate collapse is one Bees can definitely help remediate, you'd think, that being part of Bees' memories; but centuries on Mars have overlaid a lot of unhelpful knowledge. The Martian bioforms are such a great idea, and you *know* I approve of intelligent dog-forms! Their terrestrial rescuees are the usual lot of mired-in-muck religious nuts, feudal static thinkers who need help but only want it to look like their idea of a perfect present, and passive whiners. Al the Martians are oddly indulgent IMO. I'd've kicked ass, banged heads...but these rescuers really seem to try to stay helpful.

Ultimately, I'd give this to Dad because the very human-Dadly thing of needing to Fix It, to Help and to Serve a Purpose, all get a strong run. I enjoyed the story, I didn't feel it was tacked onto the end of a duology (a critique I saw that I found particularly unfair...it's been two hundred years since Bear Head so of course things changed!), and the overarching critique of flawed, fallible humanity was challenging but not bleak.

A lot like being a Dad.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SHROUD
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Orbit Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An utterly gripping story of alien encounter and survival from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.

They looked into the darkness and the darkness looked back . . .

New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists—and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them . . .

If they escape Shroud, they’ll face a crew only interested in profiteering from this extraordinary world. They’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A stand-alone story by a genre stalwart? Make the trip to the bookstore! A story where the aliens on a truly unnerving world are actually more humane than the humans' own bosses? Perfect for Dad on his special day, especially if he's not retired yet. Talk about living in hope....

Hope feels like a luxury to the women trying not to die on a moon whose every physical parameter seems purpose-built to kill them. (Of course it was—this is a novel.) These two women are put in a terrible place to determine if Shroud, the human name for their likely grave-place, has economic value to their corporation.

Author Adrian is not the biggest supporter of the capitalist world we live in. I knew I loved him for a reason.

As the constraints of Shroud bind their actions and options ever-tighther, their gynergy and their willingness to think outside the training and the constructs of their society coupled with Shroud's life form's desire to communicate with these utterly alien things meet and merge into true First Contact. One of my favorite plot devices, that.

I think it's clear I like Author Adrian's storytelling. I want to spoiler the hell out if why in this story's case more than in Bee Speaker's case. I'm really impressed this arachnid-fancyin' fantasy writer has bent his brain to the task of making Shroud make sense without showing too much of the gearshifting tech he used to get there. Author Adrian doesn't babble his techno, and doesn't imbibe a pint of handwavium before every chapter. I find the balance of fiction to science matches my preference in this story so perfectly you can't see the seam. Unless your Dad's a physicist by trade, I'm guessing he will quite probably enjoy this balance between story told and space-world built too.

I recommend it, and get one for yourself too. Borrowing Dad's might be tough to talk him into.

SORCERY & SMALL MAGICS, charming queer love story in a magical fantasy world

SORCERY & SMALL MAGICS
MAIGA DOOCY (The Wildersongs Trilogy #1)
Orbit Books
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Desperate to undo the curse binding them to each other, an impulsive sorcerer and his curmudgeonly rival venture deep into a magical forest in search of a counterspell—only to discover that magic might not be the only thing pulling them together.

Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics.

He can summon butterflies with a song, or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Such minor charms don’t earn him much admiration from other sorcerers (or his father), but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face. Which is why Leo vowed years ago to never again write powerful magic.

That is, until a mix-up involving a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime nemesis, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and an absolutely insufferable curmudgeon. The only thing they agree on is that getting caught using forbidden magic would mean the end of their careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. But Grimm casts spells, he doesn’t undo them, and Leo doesn’t mess with powerful magic.

Chasing rumors of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws alike. To dissolve the curse, they’ll have to uncover the true depths of Leo’s magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and—much to their horror—work together.

Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Forced proximity/mismatched temperaments/social class disparity stories are almost always going to frustrate me. No exception here.

The young men are in that magic bubble of time where all the world's new, fresh, and exciting, the education you're receiving in class is only part of what you're learning, and everything is still possible. Great start, then. Add onto the plus side being queer isn't any kind of issue in this milieu. I'm going to say the quiet part out loud: Magic curses are as good an explanation as any for the reality of human desire. (Which, incidentally, is not consummated...a lot like Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunners series, you're not getting a HEA or even HFN in this story.)

If that's a dealbreaker for you, this isn't your best investment of eyeblinks. I was on the bubble about that aspect of the story, but I'm willing to go with it because I like these boys. Carping, whiny brats that they are, they're also tentatively figuring out the limits of their magical powers (a stand-in for real-life capabilities and drive for success, with the same drawbacks and problems we all face) as they each need the other's innate skill to complete any magical aim. If there's a better metaphor for a successful love relationship, I don't know of it.

Leo, our PoV character, is privileged and gifted beyond his comfort zone in his branch of magic. He's a chatterbox and uses words beautifully. It's a great way for him to distract others from the huge depths of his talent. Grimm is aptly named, as he's learned from a hardscrabble beginning that resolute focus on results is The Way To Succeed. They're excellent complements for each other's strengths.

Why, then, was I frustrated by the story I'm clearly enjoying? I don't like the implications of forced proximity. "Forced" is always going to trouble me. The feelings developed in forced proximity are, well, forced. Like forcing a plant, the result is at best an attenuated version of the unforced thing. I mistrust the trope because life has taught me not to trust forced feelings for long.

I'm sure, though, that others feel differently. I'm also sure that the book's ending is not placed where it is for no reason or simply by chance. Author Doocy understands the material she's working with. Her skills are very much congruent with the material's focus on the communication these young men are learning to give and receive. So I will set aside my unease in the face of my trust in her storytelling skill.

Again I remind romance readers that this is fantasy first, romantic fantasy to be sure, but romance-novel endings are not included. Much to be praised, and much to enjoy, so recommended reading.

THE BODY SCOUT, Lincoln Michel's big, fast racing machine of a sci-fi thriller

THE BODY SCOUT
LINCOLN MICHEL
Orbit Books
$27.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the future you can have any body you want—as long as you can afford it.

But in a New York ravaged by climate change and repeat pandemics, Kobo is barely scraping by. He scouts the latest in gene-edited talent for Big Pharma-owned baseball teams, but his own cybernetics are a decade out of date and twin sister loan sharks are banging down his door. Things couldn't get much worse.

Then his brother—Monsanto Mets slugger J.J. Zunz—is murdered at home plate.

Determined to find the killer, Kobo plunges into a world of genetically modified CEOs, philosophical Neanderthals, and back-alley body modification, only to quickly find he's in a game far bigger and more corrupt than he imagined. To keep himself together while the world is falling apart, he'll have to navigate a time where both body and soul are sold to the highest bidder.

Diamond-sharp and savagely wry, The Body Scout is a timely science fiction thriller debut set in an all-too-possible future.

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

"We build better livers, and someone concocts stronger booze. We get sun treatments, then our chemicals burn up the ozone even more. Cure one disease, and another pops up. The pitcher juices up his throw, and the batter juices up his swing. On and on it goes."
–and–
“We’re all trapped in these forms, aren’t we? Our minds get poured into them without anyone even asking us. We grow and live in them, and yet in many ways they are as incomprehensible to us as the cosmos.”
–and–
"We've got 'em all. Mammoth burgers, teriyaki tyrannosaurs wings, saber-toothed gyro platters. Those cocksuckers thought they could avoid being eaten by going extinct. Bunch of buffoons. Didn't count on human ingenuity. We can eat anything these days. Eat the past, present or future."

The flavor of the writing is right there...wry, world-weary, ever so slightly facetious...and if that ain't your jam, baby, move along. Author Michel, whose story collection Upright Beasts earned praise from me, fails to shock me with his writing and planning chops. It's very clear why he offers writing advice for a living.

What would happen if Gattaca and Moneyball had a bastard love-child? This book. From the off, I loved the choices Author Michel made. Baseball is my only organized sport love. Having the Mets (my team since the 1969 Miracle Mets defeated the BodyMore Inc....I mean Baltimore!...Orioles in the seventh game of the World Series) owned by Monsanto was, while revolting, not entirely unthinkable. Choosing baseball for the body-modding corporate shills to play made perfect sense because there's so much more to work with in the prowess-enhancement department. Baseball players are required to specialize in this day and age...don't get me started about the designated-hitter rule!...and yet by the very nature of the game there is a constellation of skills they still need to possess to some degree, like running and fielding the ball. The development of modifying tech, driven by the need/want of the Big Pharma owners, gets laid right at present-day capitalism's (and its political stooge class's) door, as the present-day pandemic accelerated the mad dash for corporate ownership of everything into sports. It's not at all unlikely, given that corporations own teams in Japan....

But the fact that the world Kobo Zunz lives in, the one that allows him to modify his body to an absurd degree despite having become a talent scout thus no longer playing baseball, is chock-a-block with delightfully pointed choices embodied in other characters: Dolores ("sorrows" or "pains") is Kobo's friend/kinda-ex, a Deaf person who elected not to restore her hearing but to enhance her sight (GoogleGlasses-esque modifications to one eye that present speech translated into ASL); Natasha the Neanderthal, the Big Pharma enforcing muscle and that's not a nickname but a descriptive label as she's of the genetically engineered re-introduced Neanderthals; Lila, the Angry Young Girl who, like Greta Thunberg, is outraged into incandescence at the gigantic mess her elders are leaving for her to clean up. I love that, when Kobo the expert at foreseeing trends in body modification (always ask an addict to get an accurate vision of the addiction's course) is summoned to solve the gruesome and very public murder of his adopted brother, Monsanto Mets batting (aka "slugging") star JJ Zunz, it's by a manager whose only name is "the Mouth." Ha! Kobo's debts incurred in body modding will be paid in full...if he pins the very public, obviously message-sending murder on a particular rival team. That will get the scary, violent loansharks who have been funding his biomechanical enhancement addiction, Brenda and Wanda, off his terrifying-nightmares list.

So what am I saying about this read? Much delighted me, mentioned above. There are things that didn't delight me near so much. The length of the story, for example, would support more exploration of side characters who got little (JJ's mother, who adopted Kobo). But in all honesty I'd've been much happier if some of the amazing ideas and snarky asides had been held in RAM for a sequel, leaving a fizzier and more propulsive through-line. It's not like it's a slow read, or wasn't for me; it's just densely packed with irresistible shiny baubles and it could've been told in less time and at a more spanking pace. I presume this is not the start of a series because the publishers would've trumpeted that fact if it had been. If Author Michel chooses to make it into a series, which I really hope he will, quite a lot of the underexplored material will be very expandable.

What isn't expandable is the ending. A very weird change of tone takes place as we're coming in for our landing. It becomes...sweet. Kind of sentimental. This felt so very wrong to me, like Philip Marlowe got a hit of some opiods and turned into Ted Lasso.

What I will say is that you're going to love The Body Scout if you loved George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran books, or the early William Gibson. I did; I do; and all cavils aside, I'd encourage any baseball fans, bleak/noir fiction lovers, and anti-capitalists to hop on board. A few bumps on the journey shouldn't detract from the way-cool scenery.

LEVIATHAN'S WAKE, first book in a busy series whose Syfy adaptation is better

LEVIATHAN WAKES
JAMES S.A. COREY (The Expanse, #1)
Orbit Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 2.5* of five

**UPDATE 22 December 2016** This is a mea-culpa of epic proportions. Syfy did a stellar job of making this series. I couldn't have been more wrong about the series, though I still don't like the books. This YouTube video of a Google Talk from 2014 is a terrific proof of why the series works so well. Excellent television! Binge on the series at Prime for the holidays.

**UPDATE 6 September 2013** More Suckass News Dept, from SFSignal: "Variety is reporting that scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Iron Man and Children of Men) will script the pilot of the how called The Expanse, which is based on the series of novels written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck under the pseudonym James S.A. Corey.

The book series cosnsists of Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate and the soon-to-be-released Cibola Burn.

The Expanse will be an hour long SciFi drama “with elements of a detective procedural, centring on a cover-up of the discovery of alien life”.

Not much else is known at this point. Stay tuned!"

Yuck. Couldn't pick a GOOD series. No no no.

The Publisher Says: Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations - and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

My Review: Exactly half-way to a five-star world-beating yodel-worthy space opera. An extremely interesting choice of time to explore, sort of late Red Mars-to-early-Green Mars time. A choice group of characters, the standard Hero's Journey plot, and away we go!

Only we don't so much. We stall out on characterization...flat-ish, unsurprising...we hop around in PoV terms until I feel like a flea on a chihuahua that ate some coffee beans and is more manic than usual. We keep events hurtling along, far too many of them in fact, and we mangle our hands in the machinery of alienness.

We did too much, ate too much, played too rough. Our tummy hurts now, and we need a nap.

Plus? I hate the ending so much I want to send the editor a nastygram. THIS COULD HAVE AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIXED. It's not for the author to do, this is a collaboration and that means sometimes a referee is needed. This was one of them. No way would I read the next book! And that's sad, because I really really like The Expanse and its cool politics and people.

One thing the show does brilliantly is make the stark divide between haves and have-nots graphic and inescapable. The Economic Royalists of The Expanse are made plain, their motives are plain, and their corruption is inescapable. This series, filmed for me but certainly the books are a great option for others, is must-see, must-read, must-absorb for the world of 2017.

ANCILLARY JUSTICE, Hugo, BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke Award winner...it's okay

ANCILLARY JUSTICE (Imperial Radch #1)
ANN LECKIE
Orbit Books
$16.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.
Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.
Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER AS PART OF THE LIBRARY THING EARLY REVIEWERS PROGRAM.

My Review: Pleasant enough. I'm not convinced that Leckie has moved the goalposts for female empowerment by preferentially using she in place of he, which so far as I can see is what's new and different about this book.

Congratulations to Ms. Leckie for winning her many awards, and to Orbit for seeing the potential in the book. I have missed everything the awards committees have seen, and am almost certainly the poorer for it. I feel no more Enlightened in my gender-role attitudes than I was before, and am not going to remember this book in about a day. The xenophobic imperialists the Radch were mildly interesting. The pragmatic handling of religion on the Radch's part was refreshing and appealing.

But Hugo Award, BSFA Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award? Really? I'm obviously missing something major. I don't see it.


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