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.

Review: "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell

Astronomers studying the Alpha Centauri system pick up a broadcast of unearthly music, finally putting the existence of alien civilizations beyond down. While government and scientists debate, private organizations take action. The first mission to contact an alien race is led by representatives of the Jesuit Order.

Years later, the sole survivor of the mission to Rakhat is retrieved from an alien brothel: bizarrely mutilated and, by his own admission, a murderer.

Father Emilio Sandoz's survival is as miraculous as it is inconvenient. The media demands answers of the Jesuits, outraged by the behavior of their representatives and the civil war they sparked among the peaceful alien society they discovered. To preserve the reputation of their disgraced order, the Father General of the Society of Jesus must force Sandoz to speak. No one, least of all Sandoz, is prepared for his confession.

***

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (1996)

5 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 4/5
Quality of Writing: 5/5
Strength of Characterization: 5/5
Logic of Plot Development: 5/5
Evocation of Setting: 5/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 5/5
Resolution of Conflict: 4/5
Emotional Engagement: 5/5
Mental Engagement: 4/5
Memorability: 5/5
Bechdel Test: pass?
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: character deaths, rape, reference to child prostitution, cannibalism, suicidal thinking

Overall Response: I am devastated and become something new.

***

More Thoughts: I don't have a category for The Sparrow. It defies classification and shatters my petty little rating system. Mary Doria Russell doesn't just write a successful story--she succeeds on a level I didn't know was possible. 

Series Review: "Foreigner" by C.J. Cherryh

Humans and atevi are incompatible: That is the message everyone learned from the War of the Landing, when human refugees from the spaceship Phoenix tried to settle on atevi lands. For peace to exist on the planet, the two races must be strictly segregated.

Bren Cameron is the paidhi, the sole translator between the atevi mainland and the surviving human contingent on the island of Mospheira. It is an unglamorous and steady job: signing off on cargo shipments, perhaps writing a dictionary entry or two. But when the long-lost Phoenix returns after two centuries of silence, the fragile peace maintained by Bren's predecessors is shattered.

Half of the human population sees this as their chance to return to power. More than half of the atevi see it as evidence of a centuries-long human plot to betray and exterminate the atevi. Suddenly Bren, the maker of dictionaries, must stand in the gap between the species--and negotiate with powers who consider assassination a perfectly acceptable legal recourse.

***

Foreigner (series) by C.J. Cherryh (1994 & onward)

3 to 4 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 4/5
Quality of Writing: 4/5
Strength of Characterization: 4/5
Logic of Plot Development: 3/5
Evocation of Setting: 5/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 3/5
Resolution of Conflict: 4/5
Emotional Engagement: 4/5
Mental Engagement: 5/5
Memorability: 4/5
Bechdel Test: pass (in later books)
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: description of torture (first book)

Overall Response: It's not for everyone, but if it's for you, it's SO FOR YOU.

***

More Thoughts: Dear reader, this once, I'll have to spoil plot developments in order to give this series my recommendation. C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner books are so dear to my heart--and so familiar--that I forgot how unsteady it is at the start. I recommended it to certain of you without preface, and was disappointed when the series didn't arrest you as it did me. I wondered how other readers could not have delighted in gauging alliances based on number theory, or in lethal applications of the word "finesse."

Then I reread it myself, and remembered that the first book is a bit... impenetrable.

Anthology Review: "Alternate Realities" by C.J. Cherryh

I have always found it tricky to recommend the novels of C.J. Cherryh to other people.

Previously, I've given high marks to her western frontier/sci-fantasy/horror duology Rider At The Gate and Cloud's Rider. On the other hand, I've mentioned her problem with fuzzy climactic moments (see the review of Peter S. Beagle's The Innkeeper's Song.)

Cherryh's most famous work, the "Foreigner" series, is my favorite "culture clash" tale...  and a very hard read for people who expect a little more blazing guns and a little less diplomacy in their sci-fi.

But Cherryh's anthology Alternate Realities is an absolute gift to the science fiction genre.

I cannot speak as to the quality of the anthology's third story, "Wave Without A Shore." Every time I try to read it, my eyes slowly close and the book slides from my uninspired fingers. (I suppose that's a comment on quality after all.) However, the first two--"Port Eternity" and "Voyager in Night"--are the most delicious sci-fi novellas ever put to paper. The stories are so rich, so complex. They play in my brain like half-remembered movie clips when I'm awake too late at night.

Now, 66% success is still a failing grade by the reckoning of most American school systems. For fiction, however, that's two amazing books for the price of one, plus a bonus paperweight.

My usual "summary followed by critique" format doesn't work quite as well for anthologies as for novels, when I have only a single plot to describe. Instead, I'll break both stories down beneath the cut.

Review: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs

As a child, Jacob loved his grandfather's stories about the magical island off of Wales where he and other children waited out the devastation of World War II. When he grew up, he recognized them for the fairy tales they were--until the day he finds his grandfather dying in the woods behind his house, and lays eyes on the monster which killed him.

Jacob is haunted by nightmares of what he saw. The peculiar photographs his grandfather entrusted to him make the impossible old stories seem real. With the encouragement of his worried psychologist, Jacob and his father travel to Wales. His father hopes that Jacob will see how ordinary the island is and realize that his grandfather's stories were only imaginary. Jacob hopes to find proof that the peculiar children from the photographs really existed. He finds far more than he ever dreamed.

***

1 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Two-For-One Review: "Rider at the Gate" and "Cloud's Rider" by C.J. Cherryh

"Heed not the beasts," the preachers who led the human colonization of Finisterre say. The planet's native species, great and small, predator and prey, can fill a person's mind with telepathic images until reality blurs. When the most dangerous of all--the carnivorous nighthorse--comes calling for a rider, the best thing their quarry can do is go join it, before it kicks in the door and lets in the many-toothed swarm of the world.

Danny Fisher is cast out by his religious family when he becomes Cloud's rider. But the rider camp that protects Shamesey town is no safe place for a poor junior rider, either. When the only rider to show him kindness is driven out as a rogue, Danny rides into the mountains alone to help him.

Up in the snowbound heights, a real rogue terrorizes isolated villages, hunting down any truckers or riders caught outside walls. Insanity is a deadly pandemic on Finisterre, when the thoughts of a madman--or a mad horse--can infect an entire mountain range. With the wilderness full of hungry predators, and human settlements full of paranoia and old grudges, no one may survive the coming winter.

*** 

3.5 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Life As We Knew It" by Susan Beth Pfeffer

When the asteroid collision shifted the moon's orbit, Miranda thought it was no big deal. But the very next day, her mother pulls her out of school to hoard all the food they can carry out of the supermarket. Miranda thinks she is overreacting. Things can't be that bad--can they?

Instead of cute boys and test scores, she begins to worry about what they will do when the fuel runs out, or what has happened to her father, out of touch with satellites down and electrical power unavailable. Day by day, her world becomes emptier, hungrier, and smaller. The world she knew is gone forever.

The end of the world is not a single moment, but a lifetime... one which may be very short after all.

*** 

  3.5 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: "Feed" by Mira Grant

The zombie apocalypse has come--and stayed. Twenty-five years after the initial outbreak of the virus, the infected continue to shuffle hungrily after warm flesh. Worse, every single living person is a carrier for the dormant virus, which could claim them at any time.

Even in the face of the undead, however, life goes on. Bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are selected to cover the presidential campaign of Peter Ryman, the first candidate to have been a teenager during the first horrifying outbreak.  Few have trusted the official media since censoring and misinformation led to the (un)deaths of thirty-two percent of the population--leaving bloggers in the position of viral truth-tellers for the world. Ryman hopes the presence of the Mason team will give his campaign the legitimacy and the popular support he needs.

Georgia and Shaun, poster children of the apocalypse generation, are prepared for cross-country travel through a zombie-filled wasteland. But even the living dead aren't as lethal as ordinary humans with an agenda. Political schemes escalate from sabotage, to murder, to biological terrorism. The Masons were hired to tell the world the truth--and someone doesn't want it told.

*** 

  4 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: "Revelation Space" by Alastair Reynolds

The first book in the Inhibitor Trilogy

Humanity has entered interstellar space to find itself strangely alone. The galaxy is littered with life-supporting planets and the ruins of alien civilizations, but of extant peers--none.

Dan Sylveste is singleminded to the point of monomania in his pursuit to understand the extinction of the alien Amarantin. As he gathers evidence that the birdlike race achieved starflight before their demise, his research team mutinies. Meanwhile, the ghostly simulation of his dead father taunts Sylveste with the secrets he has hidden.

Aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity, Triumvir Ilia Volyova has a quest of her own: to find a cure for the virus which slowly dissolves her Captain. The computer program containing the memories of Calvin Sylveste may have the answer. But a spectral entity lurking in the ship's weapons cache works against Volyova, driving her fellow crew members mad and twisting the ship to its own sinister purpose.

Ana Khouri, an assassin-for-sport on the planet Yellowstone, is blackmailed by the mysterious Mademoiselle into taking an illegal commission: to find and kill a man who has not paid to die. Haunted by the phantoms of her soldiering days, and the far more literal phantom of the Mademoiselle implanted in her brain, Khouri searches for her target--Sylveste.

Across the vast realms of space and time, the three converge on the planet Resurgam, where the Amarantin race died. And where, if they are not very careful, humanity will soon follow.

***   4 out of 5 stars (grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Ship of Fools/Unto Leviathan" by Richard Paul Russo

The Argonos has been lost in space for so long that its intended destination, like its port of origin, has been forgotten. The beacon from the planet Antioch is the first hint of civilization it has encountered in decades. But when Bartolomeo and the exploration team land planetside, they find only corpses.

Despite Antioch's disturbing mysteries, the underclasses enslaved by the Argonos view it as a chance at freedom. Their desperate attempt to escape the ship ends in catastrophe. Bartolomeo, caught in a political struggle between the ship's captain and its bishop, is cast as the leader of the mutiny and thrown in the brig.

While the imprisoned Bartolomeo questions his place on a ship that despises him, the Argonos returns to its solitary voyaging. For the first time in memory, though, it has a direction. Clues on Antioch lead them into the black of space--where a vast structure, not built by human hands, waits to be found.

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

Review: "Shards of Honor" by Lois McMaster Bujold

This was the only reasonable cover
I could find. The worst offenders
are displayed for your amusement
below the cut.

When Commander Cordelia Naismith's survey expedition is massacred in a Barrayan attack. Stranded in an alien wilderness, she joins forces with the enemy: Admiral Captain Vorkosigan, left for dead by a mutiny within the Barrayan forces. The history of war between their cultures is long and ugly--but the partnership forged over their long trek to safety is stronger still.

Now a prisoner of the Barrayans who rescued Vorkosigan, Cordelia is divided between her duty to her people and her personal loyalty to the man who crossed a planet with her. Intrigue and treason threatens Vorkosigan from his own people. Meanwhile, the survivors of Cordelia's crew team up with the mutineers in a desperate attempt to rescue her.

As far as the warlike Barrayans are concerned, the astrocartographer is no threat: she's no fighter, she's a woman, she's an unarmed prisoner. From where Cordelia stands, though, she holds the power of life and death: for herself, for Vorkosigan, and for both of their ways of life.


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

Review: "Clockwork Heart" by Dru Pagliassotti

That's "clockwork," not "cleckwerk."
Good job, typographers.

High above the streets and smoke plumes of Ondinium, Taya soars on silver wings. In a city driven by the beat of the great engine at its heart, only the icarii couriers move freely among the castes. Taya has been training for years in caste-appropriate protocols, hoping to earn her place in the elite diplomatic corps.

On the eve of her sister's wedding, Taya is in the right place at the right time to save one of the city's Exalted from a sabotaged cable car. She learns it was the wrong time, when the rescue entangles her in a web of intrigue and terrorism.

Across the bounds of caste, the Exalted Alister--a genius programmer--reaches out to Taya for help. But while Alister tries to protect Taya from a string of murders and bombings, his misanthropic brother, an outcast from Exalted society, looks more and more like the culprit. Someone is trying to destroy the computational machines that keep Ondinium alive, and they could use a good pair of wings--even if it means stealing them from a dead icarus.


***   4.5 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) ***