Month: September 2021

Review: Wardenclyffe by Lloyd Hall (Out 10/1/21)

Published by J. Z. Kelley on September 25, 2021

Genre: Science fiction
Audience: MG/YA
Series?: Wardenclyffe series

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: Star Trek’s Data, adventure games, the “It was earth the whole time!” trope

Achievement unlocked: I received my very first physical review copy of a book earlier this summer.

eARCs (eBooks for review) seem to be the standard for blogs like mine, and I get why. They’re much cheaper for publishers to manufacture and distribute, and reviewers can’t resell them (a controversial practice I’m not going to weigh in on right now). People with larger platforms get to require physical books for review. For the most part, I’m just happy to be invited to the party, but I was very excited to get this offer.

I was even more excited to receive the book! I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing most physical review copies don’t come packaged so beautifully, with coordinated tissue paper and thank-you notes:

How I received *Wardenclyffe*: Wrapped in purple tissue paper with a gold sticker and a hand-written thank you note.

The author and publisher of Wardenclyffe, Lloyd Hall, has a fashion and costume design background, and it shows. Even discounting the gorgeous packaging, which I assume retailers like Target won’t include, the book itself is a work of art. The satiny, dark purple hardback and matching dust cover were illustrated by Abigail Spence. You can’t tell from the little digital image, but when you hold it in your hand, the drawing almost looks like a linocut. It’s stunning.

Additional illustrations throughout the book by Minna Ollikainen help bring the world of Wardenclyffe to life.

An early illustration from Wardenclyffe shows carnival booths, trees, and banners at the Illumination Festival in the town of Valentine. The image is in black and white, with geometric shapes and patterns reminiscent of mandala designs. — Featuring my latest nail polish love, Femme Fatale’s “You’re Not Even Alive!”

Despite its beauty, I had a tough time getting into this book at first.

We got off to a bad start. Though it remains popular, I’m always put off by the sci-fi trope where characters in futuristic settings talk about weird old artifacts they found that we, the readers, recognize as commonplace in our time:

Mary is behind the counter distributing large containers to the crowd. I look inside the container and see it filled with hundreds of tiny pieces of white material. I approach Mary …
“What is the material you are distributing?” I ask her.
Mary laughs. “It’s food, Bit!”
ANALYSIS — UNKNOWN
“I am unfamiliar with this food,” I tell her.
“Well you’re not completely unfamiliar. You know the corn we grow up in the fields behind the cafe?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Well that’s what this is!”
DATABASE SEARCH — MATCH INCOMPATIBLE
“It does not appear to be the same,” I say. She laughs again.
“No it is, I promise! We just found a new way to cook it,” she explains.
“What method of preparation causes the physical appearance to change?” I ask.
“Well, Bruce found us this old book of recipes. If you take the corn kernels and heat them they do this.”

This happens several times in the first few chapters, and I seriously considered DNF’ing the book because of it.

Another problem I had is the book is written in a style that feels overly simplistic for the intended audience (thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds).

This could be a deliberate stylistic choice. The narrator, Bit, is an android. Though she’s physically stronger than ordinary humans, doesn’t age, and has perfect recall, Bit lacks several basic human traits, including emotions and the capacity to recognize beauty. She’s overly literal and lacks a sense of humor.

It makes sense that her sentences would be short and direct with limited sensory details, but I still struggled with them at first. I barely made it through the disaster that cuts off all power to Valentine and the surrounding towns and Bit’s decision to journey north (for years, if she has to) in search of a scientist she believes may have a solution.

Things changed for me almost as soon as she got out of town. While I struggled to invest in any of Wardenclyffe’s characters, I found the world fascinating and mysterious.

Bit travels through a town called Paradise, where most people spend their days turning power switches on and off to make sure they use the exact same amount of power in the exact same way as they have for generations, and an island called St. Helens, where technology is reviled and melted down for scrap. The people of Paradise believe disasters are the result of breaking tradition. The people of St. Helens believe they’re caused by technology.

I started to think of Wardenclyffe less as a novella and more as an adaptation of an adventure game or a Twilight Zone episode. It gave me serious Myst vibes. That way, the odd, clunky dialogue seems less like a flaw and more like an essential element of the genre.

As Bit travels, we learn more about the history of her world. A catastrophic event referred to as “the flooding” resulted in the loss of most of the human population as well as most human knowledge, so that surviving people can use old technology but they cannot repair it or create new technology. I like that the book doesn’t try to explain what caused the flood or fill in every detail of the world before and after. That kind of granular worldbuilding has to be immaculate, and leaving it vague makes it easier to suspend disbelief.

It wasn’t until Bit reached St. Helens that I realized her world is actually our world. St. Helens is an island in a thermal lake either near or in the crater of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. June, the location of the titular Wardenclyffe lighthouse, is Juneau, Alaska. Paradise is a town in California, and I think Valentine might refer to Valentine Camp, also in California. This is maybe hypocritical, given what I said earlier, but I was delighted by these breadcrumbs and felt very smart for getting them.

Wardenclyffe, if you’re wondering, is not actually a lighthouse in Alaska. It was an “early experimental wireless transmission station” built by in New York Nikola Tesla, later torn down to settle some of his debts. I didn’t know that part in advance. Google told me.

The mysteries of the scientist and what happened to Valentine’s power are tied to the mystery of Bit’s creation and why she has outlasted all the other androids. She finds all the answers she’s looking for near Wardenclyffe, which should make for a satisfying ending. I’m still torn on whether or not it does, though. I think it’s thematically appropriate, but perhaps because I never connected with the characters, I didn’t find it particularly emotionally resonant.

Still, I really enjoyed exploring the world of Wardenclyffe, and I’m intrigued by the possibility of future books. I’d definitely pick up book two if it had a different narrator with a more descriptive voice.

Can you do me a favor?

If you like this review, please like it on Goodreads and maybe follow me there.

More Info

Publisher: Self published
Hardback Page Count: 238

Lloyd Hall is on Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

You can preorder the book (out October 1) directly from the author’s website.

Review: Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (Out 9/21/21)

Published by J. Z. Kelley on September 11, 2021

Genre: Science fiction
Audience: YA
Series?: Iron Widow #1

Rating: Loved it!

For fans of: Darling in the Franxx, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pacific Rim, The Hunger Games, Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton, Chinese harem dramas, angry bisexuals who don’t flinch when they kill their enemies

Spoiler alert: I’m not going to spoil this book any more than the author has on social media, but if you’d prefer not to know what happens at all, please come back when you’ve finished Iron Widow!

Here is everything I knew about Iron Widow when I requested it from NetGalley: It’s a reimagining of the rise of the only female Chinese emperor written by the person who made those Mulan videos. I expected historical fiction, political intrigue, and maybe some family drama.

Iron Widow is nothing like I expected. If I had to write an elevator pitch, I’d say it’s a dark mecha anime with an MFM throuple that makes only minor concessions to YA conventions. There’s a makeover, a love triangle, and a homecoming, but there’s also so much violence The Hunger Games looks like a game of touch football.

It also isn’t a retelling in the sense I imagined. It isn’t set in ancient China, but rather a non-earth sci-fi world inspired by the culture and geography of ancient China. In this world, all girls are raised as sacrifices. They’re sold to wealthy husbands or to the army. Either way, their lives are cruel and rigidly confined by both their patriarchal society and their own internalized misogyny.

Wu Zetian’s older sister was sold to the army, where male pilots use girls as fuel sources to power their giant mechs in battle against the mechanical aliens beyond the Great Wall. Girls often die in battle, but Zetian’s sister didn’t even make it that far. Her pilot strangled her to death.

To her parents’ relief, Zetian finally agrees to join the army, but she doesn’t intend to die in battle either. She plans to kill her sister’s murderer. She knows she and her entire family will be executed as a result, and she believes she’s prepared to die for her vengeance.

However, before she can act, the pilot takes Zetian into battle with him, and two unexpected things happen. First, the pilot dies in her place. Second, Zetian discovers she wants to live.

Iron Widow continues my streak of LGBT books that are so delightfully fanfic-y (Queerleaders, The Calyx Charm) they make up for the fact that they’re also continuing my streak of books that are thematically heavy.

It reads like a wildly creative AU for some mecha anime I’ve never seen. (Confession: I have never seen any mecha anime.) Partially because of, you know, all the mechs, but mostly because there is so much here that I’ve only really seen in places where writers don’t have to contend with publishing gatekeepers. In a YA novel!

The MFM throuple is a fun subversion of the love triangle trope. While I’m more invested in the enemies-to-lovers pairing than the others, I was impressed by how clearly Zhao handled them all. They felt inevitable. All four of the relationships (each character with each of the others, and then all three characters together) had ample on-screen development time, including the relationship between the non-POV characters.

I had no choice but to love Zetian, who is angry, bisexual, and traumatized. That’s everything I want in a protagonist. She even gets some shit from other characters about her weight, though the cover model is thin and it’s hard to tell if Zetian is intended to be read as fat or if this is just another example of the patriarchal scrutiny she lives under.

I also loved the plot structure, which reminded me a bit of Six of Crows. Pop writing advice says that protagonists have to fail and fail and fail again until they succeed. Each challenge they fail raises the stakes, until they’re in an impossible position with the entire universe depending on them, and only then can they succeed.

Only, it’s actually much more fun to read about protagonists succeeding occasionally. In both Iron Widow and Six of Crows, we have characters who are smart and clever and good at what they do. They encounter obstacles, strategize, and then overcome those obstacles in ways that both raise the stakes and move the plot forward. Often, Zetian succeeds in ways that only end up getting her into more trouble, but at least we get to see that she truly is remarkable, instead of just being told how Special she is.

This is also my only real complaint: Zetian is Special in a way that I feel somewhat undermines Iron Widow’s feminist themes. I have no problem with Zetian spontaneously deciding to resist her patriarchal upbringing, which seems like a matter of self-preservation more than anything. I also don’t mind how much internalized misogyny influences Zetian’s perception of other women. My problem is how the narrative reinforces Zetian’s perception.

Without venturing too far into spoiler territory, other women in Iron Widow essentially fall into 3 categories: tragic victims, catty bitches, and the tragic-victim-catty-bitch Venn diagram overlap of victims who eagerly sacrifice other women.

Zetian does occasionally think about how there have to be other girls who are as remarkable as she is, and sometimes she’ll mentally challenge her internalized misogyny. I interpret that to mean later books in will contain more nuanced female characters. I’m still disappointed by their absence in Iron Widow, but I think Zhao has done enough to merit optimism for the rest of the series.

Content Warnings

From the author: “Please be aware that this book contains scenes of violence and abuse, suicide ideation, discussion and references to sexual assault (though no on-page depictions), alcohol addiction, and torture.”

Disclosure

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

More Info

Publisher: Penguin Teen
Hardback Page Count: 400

Xiran Jay Zhao is “on Twitter for memes, Instagram for cosplays and fancy outfits, and YouTube for long videos about Chinese history and culture.”

You can support your local independent bookstore by preordering BOOK on Bookshop.org, or on Amazon.

Review: Plague Birds by Jason Sanford (Out 9/21/21)

Published by J. Z. Kelley on September 11, 2021

Genre: Science fiction
Audience: Adult
Series?: Standalone?

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy and Dreamblood duology, Meyer’s The Host*, Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, weird and unsettling AI stories, creepy children with godlike powers, cross-species friendships, furries

Don’t worry! This isn’t a story about a pandemic. It’s about bloodborne AIs.

It is not possible to write a better introduction this novel than Jason Sanford himself did on his blog:

Plague Birds is set in the far future and is the epic tale of a young woman betrayed into becoming one of her world’s hated judges and executioners, with a killer AI bonded to her very blood. While the novel is science fiction, it reads much like fantasy and is weird and dark.

The far future is a post-apocalyptic blend of low-tech agrarian societies and advanced AI. The young woman is Cristina de Ane, a human-wolf hybrid who lives with her father and their stubborn donkey in Day’s End, a small village of gene-spliced humans. (Yes, I’m reviewing two furry sci-fi books today.)

When she was alive, Crista’s mother told her stories of massive cities and the high-tech moon colony where her ancestors once lived. The other people in Crista’s village consider these stories essentially fairytales. Long before any of them were born, “excessive genetic manipulation” caused a species-wide series of conflicts and disasters collectively known as the collapse, after which:

… a horrible war was fought. Eventually, the three-fold armies won and laid down new rules for our world. The hunters [human-animal hybrids who give into their animal sides and form packs] could live their lives within certain constraints while AIs … would work with isolated villages to return [the rest of] humanity to your original state.

Plague birds are essentially wandering human-AI pairs that maintain the “three-fold balance” by ensuring no crimes go unpunished. By death.

When a plague bird confronts a suspect, they review the suspect’s memories to determine their guilt. The human host then draws their own blood in order to release the AI that lives within them. As a cloud of blood, the AI rains down upon the guilty, sometimes entire villages, killing them with agonizing slowness and creativity.

(This is why the human host is necessary: to temper the AI’s bloodlust as well as its black-and-white approach to justice.)

Obviously, plague birds aren’t exactly popular dinner guests, even though most people agree they’re necessary. Human hosts give up their village, everyone they know, and even their very connection to other humans in order to carry out their plague bird responsibilities. In exchange, their AIs enhance their senses, sustain them without the need for food or (much) sleep, heal even wounds that should be fatal, and greatly extend their lifetimes. Usually.

In the opening chapter of Plague Birds, a plague bird named Derena is attacked, incapacitated, and fatally injured in a way that shouldn’t be possible. She manages to drag herself to Day’s End, where she asks Crista to become her successor.

Crista denies Derena’s request at first because, you know, hero’s journey. However, when Crista realizes it’s the only way to save herself and her village, Crista Accepts The Call, becomes a plague bird, and sets out to find Derena’s attackers. The journey is filled with mysteries, from the plague bird Crista believes killed her mother to a sentient monastery that stores all of humanity’s accumulated knowledge to the powers fighting to maintain or disrupt the three-fold balance.

This is Sanford’s third published entry in the Plague Birds universe, following two acclaimed short stories (which don’t appear to be freely accessible online at this point). His announcement (linked above) includes a few pieces of fan art for the previous works, as well as his sheepish notes that the artists have taken some liberties in their portrayals: His protagonist doesn’t wear “red leather skin-tight suits” or “let her shirt fly up like that.”

I bring up those notes because while he’s right that this is a weird and dark book, his approach is careful and considered. This is a dark, post-apocalyptic book with no slurs. This is a dark, post-apocalyptic book in which children only die offscreen. This is a dark, post-apocalyptic book with no! sexual! violence! (There is intimate partner violence that might resonate painfully with people who have experienced sexual violence, so be aware of that, but I thought it was handled well.)

The other thing I love about this book is the characters. Crista is a brave, nuanced, conflicted character with a strong moral compass that grounds the story. On her travels, she collects a diverse group of friends and allies that slowly coalesce into a strange sort of found family. It’s always satisfying to watch battered, distrustful people grow together.

Also, Plague Birds fits into a trend I’m noticing where writers are allowing themselves to include scenes that resonate thematically but aren’t strictly necessary to advance the plot. It’s hard to be specific without spoilers, so instead I’ll spoil “Mist Songs of Delhi” (Podcastle 640), which is one of my favorite recent short stories.

The story follows Rajaji, a man with the power to decide which dying people’s lives get preserved as divine song as he copes with his mother’s approaching death and her reluctance to have her life “enspooled.” Early in the story, Rajaji meets with a merchant who has complaints about his wife’s enspoolment. This scene could have simply served to explain the enspoolment process and progress the main plot, but after Rajaji’s mother dies and the plot is resolved, we get one more scene, a happy ending for the merchant and his family.

That last scene feels generous, because we live in a world where aspirations of page-to-screen adaptation and advice from Save the Cat have made it almost taboo to include even a single sentence that doesn’t catapult the protagonist toward the next big set piece.

Plague Birds is full of interludes and quiet moments that feel equally generous.

The only thing that doesn’t work about this book for me is how much the final acts depend upon a series of nesting reveals that I completely saw coming. I don’t think endings need to be a total surprise. In fact, I think a twist ending that isn’t telegraphed at all is worse than a predictable ending. However, in this instance, I found the tension really went out of the story when I wasn’t struggling to figure out which characters to believe and which were lying.

Other reviewers felt differently, so take that with a grain of salt. You may be surprised on your first reading, or you may enjoy the ride regardless.

The ending of Plague Birds is satisfying, but not entirely resolved, so I have hope there will be a book two. If there is, I’ll definitely pick it up.

*Hot take but I stand by it.

Can you do me a favor?

If you like this review, please like it on Goodreads and maybe follow me there.

Disclosure

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

More Info

Publisher: Apex
Paperback Page Count: 274

Jason Sanford is on Twitter. More importantly, he runs the Genre Grapevine Patreon, which is like a whisper network for people in the SFF community without whisper networks. Absolutely check it out and support him there, if you’re able.

You can preorder the book from Apex’s website, where they also have links to (most of) your favorite retailers.