Series Review: "Coyote" by Allen Steele

With Earth in political and ecological ruin, the discovery of a new habitable planet means a second chance. On Coyote, humanity can start over--or retread the same bloodstained paths it always has.

The United Republic of America has spared no expense--and no few lives--to develop the first interstellar colony ship. But a group of dissident intellectuals is determined that the Coyote colony will not be under the thumb of the corrupt regime.

The conspiracy to steal the URSS Alabama goes all the way to the top. On the eve of launch, Captain Lee smuggles rebel would-be colonists aboard. It is an all-or-nothing chance. Whether or not the new planet can support human civilization, they will learn the hard way--with no hope of return to Earth.

***

The Coyote Trilogy by Allen Steele (2002)

2.5 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 3/5
Quality of Writing: 3/5
Strength of Characterization: 2/5
Logic of Plot Development: 2/5
Evocation of Setting: 3/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 2/5
Resolution of Conflict: 2/5
Emotional Engagement: 1/5
Mental Engagement: 2/5
Memorability: 2/5
Bechdel Test: pass
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: character deaths, ambient misogyny, ambient racism

Overall Response: The author fails to really grip his topic, and skims over plot and characters.

***

More Thoughts: I'm hard up for good science fiction. Sci-fi westerns? Even better. When I read a delightful short story of Allen Steele's in the anthology Year's Best SF 9, entitled "The Madwoman of Shuttlefield," I raced to get my hands on the full series that inspired it. 

As it happens, the Coyote series makes for good plane reading, but I wouldn't go out of my way to read it again.

Series Review: The "Spiritwalker Trilogy" by Kate Elliott

Cousins Cat and Bee Barahal are lucky to be alive in an age of invention and change. They are among the first women to be educated alongside men in the academy of Adurnam. But the daughters of Phoenician spies and soldiers weren't born to sit quietly and behave: adventure is in their bones.

To Cat's surprise, so is magic. On her twentieth birthday, cold mages from the powerful Four Moons House come for her, citing an old contract marrying the eldest Barahal girl to the heir of their house.

But Phoenician families like the Barahals are renowned for their sly dealings. The contract that snared Cat was meant for Bee, whose prophetic visions make her a prize to whoever owns her. The thwarted mages of Four Moons House are determined to try again to claim her--over Cat's dead body.

Now both cousins are on the run, revolution and old magic igniting in their footsteps.

***

The Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliott (2010)

2 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 3/5
Quality of Writing: 1/5
Strength of Characterization: 2/5
Logic of Plot Development: 1/5
Evocation of Setting: 3/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 1/5
Resolution of Conflict: 1/5
Emotional Engagement: 2/5
Mental Engagement: 2/5
Memorability: 2/5
Bechdel Test: pass
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: none that I can recall

Overall Response: What a colossal letdown. I have a headache.

***

More Thoughts: Dear reader, if you took a shot for every Conveniently Overheard Conversation in this series, you'd be dead from alcohol poisoning. And your mourners could still host an open bar at your funeral reception with the booze you didn't get to finish. Yikes.

Review: "Green Rider" by Kristen Britain

Karigan G'ladheon leaves the Sacoridian university with one worry on her mind: how to explain her disgraceful expulsion to her family.

Her woes no longer seem as important when she finds a Green Rider, one of the king's messengers, dying on the road. In desperation, the Rider gives Karigan his horse, his message, and a warning: beware the shadow man. The black arrows in his back, binding him beyond the grave, signal what fate awaits her if she fails.

Carrying the dead Rider's burden, Karigan races to reach the king, pursued by unnatural forces. Ghosts and monsters block her path. But there is more to being a Green Rider than just wearing the uniform. When she accepted the dead man's mission, she gained his strange powers as well--and Karigan does not ride alone. 

*** 

2 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Cinder" by Marissa Meyer

Linh Cinder may be the best mechanic in New Beijing, but that fact brings her no happiness. First, all of her wages--and everything else she owns--belong to her stepmother. Secondly, if the reason for Cinder's technological genius got out, she would be taken away with all the other cyborgs.

Cinder's cyborg nature becomes a hidden blessing. She is immune to the plague which ravages the rest of New Beijing, from the slums and junkyards all the way to the royal palace where the Emperor lies dying. In his stead, Prince Kai tries to find a cure for the plague while keeping the devious Lunar Queen at bay. He finds an unlikely ally in Cinder. But can his trust in her be returned?

*** 

2 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" by Emily M. Danforth

The day that Cameron Post kisses a girl for the first time, her parents die in a car accident.

While every one of her peers in tiny Miles City, Montana struggles with romance, rebellion, and boredom, her orphan status--and her infatuation with her female friends--sets Cameron apart. She is convinced that God took her parents away to punish her for her sinful ways, but she can't stop thinking about beautiful, graceful Coley.

It's only a matter of time until someone realizes that the heart Cameron wears on her sleeve is rainbow-hued--and when they do, they will set out to fix her.

*** 

  2 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Redemption Ark" by Alastair Reynolds

(Redemption Ark is the second book in a series. I reviewed Revelation Space, the first book , here.) 

***

Humanity has attracted the attention of the Inhibitors: the alien machines designed to eradicate intelligent life throughout the galaxy. Tireless, relentless, unstoppable, the Inhibitors cannot be outwitted or outfought. Maybe, just maybe, they can be outrun.

Ana Khouri races against the clock to evacuate the planet Resurgam. One species has already been hunted to extinction there by the Inhibitors, and if she fails, humans will be next. Meanwhile, Triumvir Ilia Volyova negotiates with her former captain--a ghostly presence haunting his own ship--for the use of the cache weapons to protect Resurgam.

But the Conjoiners who created the cache weapons are coming to collect them. The artificially enlightened subspecies are turning their backs on baseline humanity, leaving them for the Inhibitors while the Conjoiners flee the galaxy. The Conjoiner hero Nevil Clavain, who was human himself many centuries ago, suffers a crisis of conscience and defects to warn humanity of the danger. Now he must beat his own people to the cache weapons--if Ilia and the Captain will agree to turn them over. When all of human civilization is awaiting execution, there are no right answers, and not enough time.

*** 

  2 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Bridge of Birds" by Barry Hughart

When all the children in the village of Ku-fu fall mysteriously ill, Number Ten Ox goes to find a cure for them. In Peking's Street of Eyes, he hires the assistance of the ancient and unscrupulous sage Li Kao. But the only known cure for the mysterious ailment appears to be something out of a fairy tale--a magical ginseng root.

Ox and Li Kao set off in search of miracles, and money, and revenge. Every trail they follow leads them back to the Duke of Ch'in, with his terrifying tiger mask and his deadly labyrinth. Against his power, even Li Kao's clever schemes and Ox's pure faith may not be enough. Meanwhile, the sickly children of Ku-fu are running out time.

*** 

  2.5 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Fangirl" by Rainbow Rowell

 When Cath leaves home for her first year of college, she's not ready for change. She already has everything that she needs: a loving father, a twin to be her guaranteed best friend, and twenty thousand hits on her fanfiction about the popular Simon Snow series.

But Wren doesn't want to be Cath's other half anymore. For the first time in her life, Cath is alone, living among strangers. She doesn't know where the dining hall is. Her new roommate is too loud, too pushy, too attractive. Her professors think fanfiction is plagiarism.

Not to mention the presence of boys--ones made of flesh and blood rather than paper and ink. Boys in her classes, boys in her room, boys she can't control with a few taps on a keyboard.

When will Cath have time to finish her fanfiction with all these changes getting in the way?

***   2.5 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut)

***

Review: "Fitcher's Brides" by Gregory Frost

The Charter girls' new stepmother is a very religious woman--and her religion of choice is Elias Fitcher, whose prophecies schedule the end of the world for October 1843. Whether they want it or not, Vernelia, Amy, and Kate are going to be among the saved--and the married--on that day.

While their hapless father mans the turnstile allowing penitents into Fitcher's commune, the charismatic preacher courts each of his daughters in turn. But life as the bride of God's final prophet is far from heavenly. A darkness hides inside the walls of Harbinger House, and in the marriage bed.

***

  2.5 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut) *** 

Review: "Across the Universe" by Beth Revis

Not pictured: The Beatles.

Amy Martin gives up a lot when she agrees to join her parents on their expedition to colonize the newly discovered planet in Alpha Centauri: her friends, her boyfriend, her plans for a normal life. Instead, she will spend the next three hundred years in cryogenic freeze, traveling across the universe in the Godspeed. She is "nonessential cargo" compared to her brilliant scientist parents. But in a terrible accident, Amy wakes fifty years too early--without her parents, lost in the cold black of space.

Elder was set apart from birth to lead the crew of the Godspeed. Yet he is also the youngest and most misfit member of the ship's homogenous and rigidly controlled population, shaped by centuries of space travel. Elder's supposed mentor refuses to teach him anything about the ship. Amy is the first person Elder has ever known his own age; the first person who doesn't take a life of lies and confinement for granted; the first person who has walked on real earth and felt the warmth of a real sun on her skin.

For Elder, just knowing Amy is happiness enough. But Amy, once deemed "nonessential," is now considered a freak. She is disturbed by what humanity has become aboard the Godspeed, and wants to know who woke her, and why. More frozen passengers are found thawing ahead of schedule--and don't survive the process. With mind-altering drugs in the water and a killer on board the ship, only the misfits are asking why.
 
***   2 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut) *** 

Review: "Tigana" by Guy Gavriel Kay

To avenge his son’s death, the Ygrathan sorcerer-king Brandin laid a curse on the land of Tigana like no one had ever known—one that erased its very name. Only a generation after Tigana’s fall, few people in the peninsula of the Palm remember that such a province existed.

But even the worst tragedies leave survivors. A scattered handful of exiles remember Tigana and beautiful Avalle of the Towers, the birthplace of the Palm’s greatest music and arts, its noblest leaders and heroes. They do more than simply remember—they are determined to rise up and break the curse.

Devin d’Asoli, a traveling singer of rare talent, learns that his destiny holds more than concerts and pretty women when the truth of his own heritage is revealed. In league with Tigana’s outcast prince and a motley crew of other avengers, he embarks on a quest to unravel the sorceror’s magic, throw off the conqueror’s yoke, and make Tigana’s name heard in the Palm once again.

***   2 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut) ***