Martians Abroad - Carrie Vaughn

Carrie Vaughn is a new one for me, but not, I gather, for a lot of people/. She put out the Kitty Norville series, about a werewolf who hosts a radio advice talk show, which I have to admit was a fun sentence to type out. Vaughn, in other words, has form. So I took a chance on her foray into science fiction, Martians Abroad, and it's...well, it's fun, I'll say that.

Polly Newton and her brother, Charles, are the titular Martians. They're being packed off to an elite boarding school on earth, so that they can glad-hand with politicians children and influential industrialists grandsons, and generally get themselves prepared for a life of visibility and influence themselves. Their mother is, after all, part of the social elite on Mars.  Unfortunately for Polly and Charles, the Martians are rather more egalitarian than those Earthside - they don't see themselves as special -and the folks down on Earth thing that the Martians and the rest of the riff-raff from off-planet are about half a step up the evolutionary ladder from Smallpox, and about as welcome an addition to the school campus.

We ride along in Polly's head, and she's...I want to say likeable, but relatable is probably something more like it. Her story plays out in a conversationalist style, from one viewpoint. But she's definitely a teenager being taken from everything she knows and everything she wants, and being dumped into a deep pool  without much warning. Cue culture shock, whinging, complaints ad nauseam (justified and otherwise). It can be a little exhausting, looked at from the outside. But Polly is also smart and funny and sometimes brave. If she isn't super-special per se, she's competent and willing to make decisions, commit to them and then ride out the consequences. If I occasionally wanted to roll my eyes at the theatricality of her antics, I also went along for the ride happily enough when she pushed back on prejudice, and on the need to be better expressed through owning things. Polly has an honesty to her that makers her work as a protagonist, a willingness to just be herself which probably sits well with the intended audience (it is a YA book after all). 

Having said that, Vaughn expertly draws a world that's living in a post-climate-crisis interplanetary era. We still have the same elites and the same prejudices, with different targets, different names, different faces. But there's a sense of the world having opened up just a little, onto the wider stage. The school and its routine and occasional casual brutality seem very well realised, as does Polly's sense of isolation from her classmates, her and the others from off-earth, as they try to work with different dietary and gravitational needs, with not much by way of accommodations. There's also some points trekking around on Earth that feel melancholic, feel genuine, and those were a pleasure; there was a particular piece in a museum that stuck with me thereafter.

Sadly for Polly, and Charles, and, well, everyone else, something odd is going on at their new school for the terminally rich and posh. Accidents are happening a little too often. Things are going a bit wrong. Issues are escalating. And nobody is really talking about why. This mystery threads its way through the book, and if the denouement wasn't entirely satisfying, it did deliver in terms of tension and catharsis. The story itself is paced well up to that point, slowly giving us more and more of an insight into what's going on and why, the who the what the why the where and the how. That said, the close feels a little abrupt, and like there's more to come, more to be said - perhaps in a sequel. 

Overall, this is a fun short read, and one I rather enjoyed; I hope you do the same!

Away this week!

 We're away this week, we'll be back next week!

Overcaptain - L.E. Modesitt Jr.

So, here's the thing. L.E. Modesitt has written, at this point, twenty-four books set in his world of Recluce. Twenty-five if you include the short story collection I reviewed a couple of years ago. It's a sprawling universe that covers a sweeping amount of geography, but also a vast amount of time. Different stories have happened earlier or later in the history of Recluce, and we can see yesterdays's heroes reflected as villains in the past of today's protagonist. Or, in the case of Overcaptain, the latest story, the reverse. Because the protagonist of this story, Aliyakal, is as early in Recluce's history as we've ever gone, all the way back to near the founding of Cyador, who have largely been antagonists in other books. Seeing the beginnings of an Empire that we've often seen as enemies, seeing the way the systems that maintain it are constructed and maintained out of necessity and by good people trying to do the right thing, we can get a different perspective on a system that we've also seen very determined to incinerate a few of our protagonists "later" in the timeline. 

Cyador, you see, is something a little different. At first glance, it's a fantasy empire. Everyone's riding around on horses, with swords. Everyone is very interested in politics, and Emperors. There's a whole caste system between soldiers, traders, and people who can do magic. But, but they also have hints and asides and historical notes that say they used to be something else. They're an Empire founded by "The First". They have "firelances", which spit raw chaos energy at the aforementioned barbarians. They have "firewagons" and "fireships" which sound suspiciously modern, not quite battleships and APC's, but certainly with enough heft in them to flatten ports, and make fighting with the Cyadorans an unpleasant prospect. They have a history that says, in fragments, that they come from elsewhere. They have "chaos towers" that contain the enormous forest that used to be where their Empire now sits. And they have, increasingly, no idea how any of it works. Cyador is an empire built on technology that is slowly failing, while those in charge try to keep everything together under tremendous pressure - both internal and external. Because all sorts if people want what they have (running water, regular meals), or are more than happy to rule an Empire from behind the throne for personal gain, regardless of what's best for everyone else - because, after all, when you're a mage, and you can turn someone into dust with a word, why would you take crap from any of those little people? I've always enjoyed Cyador, a place which seems to have become increasingly sclerotic and unpleasant as it ages, and its fantastic to delve into the near origins of the place here. Looking at it through Aliyakal's eyes, we're inside of a system which seems to promise a better world for, if not everyone, at least everyone inside the system, but he's not blind to its flaws, to the abuses that are hobbling progress, the way that the military, the magi and the merchanters are always at odds, and what happens when they're not. Anyway. It's a fun place, a civilisation coming off the back of some science-fiction beginnigs, trying to build something self-sustaining. Interestingly, Modesitt does this again later with Fallen Angels, when survivors of the other side of a war in which Cyadors forebears were involved find themselves stranded on Relcuce, watching their tech also slowly fail. Its a solid beginning, and here it gives a flavour and a texture to the world,makes it a little different to your standard fantasy setting. 

As an aside, I maintain that both sides in the conflict that drove Cyador's ancestors and their eventual antagonists to Recluce is the one from Modesitt's sci-fi standalone The Parafaith War, and one day I'd love to know if that's true. 

Aliyakal is, well, this is going to sound weird, he's a Modesitt Recluce protagonist. He's smart, and also thoughtful. Having a military background makes him stand out a bit, but he fits into the mould of a lot of the others - someone who is practiced and focused on his craft, even where that craft is helping defend an empire by occasionally fighting a lot of people. He also has (ooooh) some magical power, which as a military officer, he has decided not to mention to anyone, just in case they decide he's a threat, and incinerate him. Probably a wise move, under the circumstances, because he does have a penchant for annoying important people. In fairness, that's due mostly to his actually being competent at his job, fighting off border incursions and encroachments from other local powers with minimal casualties. He's a smart person, trying to build a career and a relationship in a space where having a relationship is tantamount to stalling out your career. There's a conflict there, between two parts of his world, which we have yet to see play out - perhaps in the upcoming sequel - but the tensions are woven through his interactions, and add a nice complexity, even while we enjoy his emotionally uncomplicated burgeoning love for a long-time correspondent, and his no-nonsense approach to holding together military outposts in various degrees of collapse. Aliyakal is a decent person, and it's fun to ride around in his head for a while - and where the book allows, he's able to see the complexities of his own world, both in the strangeness of some of the things he's ordered to do, and in the web of politics clearly happening offscreen that's making his life difficult. Like all Modesitt's protagonists in Recluce though, he's a decent guy, trying his best - and if the story beats and characterisation are in a way familiar, they're also as comforting as a warm bath, and there's enough strangeness in here to make you sit up occasionally and go "Wait, what now?"

I won't spoil the story, as usual. But Aliyakal gets to visit a whole new and exciting section of the Empire of Cyador, where even more people try to get him killed than they did in From the Forest. You'll get some sharply observed, incisive military action here, and a lot of discussion of patrols, logistics, and how and why things should be done the way they are. But there's also wonder, in magic, yes, but also in the relationships Aliyakal is building, and fear and politics out there in the background, and an exploration of love and duty and honour. It is, in short, a Modesitt book, and a fine addition to the Recluce corpus. I look forward to seeing where Aliyakal goes next!

Citadel - Marko Kloos

Marko Kloos has been turning out military sci-fi for years at this point, I've been reviewing them for about as long, and I have to admit, his stuff is always a pleasure to read. It's reliable in that it always gives me characters I can empathise with, interesting worlds to delve into, and some adrenaline-shot action, usually when I'm least expecting it. His Palladium Wars series continues this trend, and has been a lovely comfort read until now. I saw the third book on sale recently, and snapped it up. So, does Citadel deliver? Basically, yes.

The book largely takes place on Gretia, a world under occupation by the remaining planetary powers in its system. Unusually, it's under occupation because it started a war, and then had the poor grace to lose it. The occupiers are struggling to contain a civilian population that doesn't want them there, and to rebuild a shattered economy without enabling the every people they fought a war against, and the Gretians want to get out from under the occupiers, and ideally never talk about that war business ever again. They're definitely not happy to have their administrative centres under military occupation, or to see armoured troops marching around like they own the place. Even if they, you know, do. And into that volatile mix have come a group of rebels, of schemers, who refuse to let the last war die, who refuse to accept that Gretia has changed its place in the universe, who are so embedded in the past that they refuse to look past it. And those people are out on Gretia, blowing up buildings and orchestrating massacres - to destabilise both the surviving power structures, and try to drive occupying forces off their world. They are very much not good people, with a penchant for civilian casualties, but they're probably familiar. This is Gretia, ruled by corporate cliques and aristocracies, trying very hard not to live with guilt, or think about it too much. Well, some of them. And this is the other powers, so sure in their virtue that they live in arrogance and pride, not reaching out to help those they can to build a better world, because of their own trauma and memory. 

If that sounds complicated and like it's going to get bloody, well...yes. The last book ended with the antagonists deploying an orbital nuke on one of the other planets, with predictable crackdown results. And so, here we are. This is a world, a system in turmoil But it makes sense. It has the seething layers of politics and personal advancement that make it real, and it has the shining stars of duty and integrity that make it true. We're spread across familiar viewpoints, including one of the occupying troops, the heir to one of the corporate Gretian dynasties, a navy captain for one of the other powers, taking a new ship on a shakedown cruise. And then there's the lost boy, a man who spent too long in the uniform of Gretian intelligence, did some things he regrets, and is now living as quietly as he can on a space freighter, trying not to let his past (and his corporate family) overwhelm his future

They're a fantastically diverse range of people, and it's to Kloos' credit that they don't all sound the same. That the corporate knives in the dark in the Gretian glass towers are as different and as sharp as the high powered recoilless rounds pouring down on our trooper and her squad. They're all people, trying to make the best of things and do the right thing. While Kloos manages to avoid the traps I find a lot of the genre falls into (the government, it turns out, are not entirely incompetent buffoons, and we aren't all better off having some aristocrats running things, and so on), he does tend to reify duty, honour and service. That's fine actually, in context, and I appreciate it here, letting us know who our heroes are. They're unapologetically decent people, which is nice. 

And they're decent people having a rough time. The action isn't unrelenting, but when it happens, it's always a shock. And that shock is often dark and bloody and kinetically charged. You can feel the tension build and seep into things, a moment of quiet turned into a bloody streetfight in a word or two. It's snappy, its gritty, and the moments between the action serve to give it room to breathe and make the meaning that keeps it embedded in the real. 

In other words, this is good stuff, and if you're looking for a quick, compelling read, this is one for you.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying - Django Wexler

Alright, this was a fun one, the fabulously named How to become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. It's a progression fantasy, of sorts. The protagonist, Davi, is stuck in a time loop. Every time she dies, she finds herself right back at the start of an epic quest to save the Kingdom (capital K) from the invading armies of the Dark Lord (also capitalised). A lot of you are nodding along at this point - the protagonist grows stronger with every loop, works out their situation, and saves the world, yes? That's what we're used to, what we expect.

Well, Wexler is here to subvert your expectations - at least some of them. Davi is sick and tired of being the saviour of the Kingdom. She's spent more than a while trying to make it work, dying over and over and over. She's jaded, tired, and absolutely done with the entire exercise. So now, Davi is going off-script. If she's stuck in a loop, she may as well have some fun. And, well, so begins the adventure of Dark Lord Davi, who decides that she'll take over the world rather than save it, because at least it's a chance to do something new. It's a fun conceit, and it helps that Davi as a narrator is quite personable. A little prone to banter, but always an entertaining read. She's not a skull-clutching cackler of evil schemes, and if she was, she'd at least provide us with a few amusing footnotes as to why. 

Instead, Davi is...well, smart, experienced, and very much trying her best to remain a decent human being in a world that just won't cut her a break. Starting each loop with, in her own words, noodle arms, makes getting into fights rather tricky. Instead, she's determined to build a coalition, an army, that will let her seizer the power of the Dark Lord for herself. But she's presented as charming, exhausted, and with a habit of snarky asides which generally landed and made me at least chuckle. I will say, as a snarky aside of my own, that while I enjoyed that partiocular lightweight tone, it might not be For You, if you wanted something with a bit more of a serious face. Which isn't to say the story itself isn't serious enough. There's betrayal and battle and heartbreak aplenty, and some sensitively drawn  male and female romance. There's some magic and monsters too. And perhaps the smartest thing about the book is the way it whallops Davi with a need to see things through, see what happens next, even as it draws in the reader. She's been a good guy a thousand times before, but this time, she's doing something new. And if she feels at the start like she can just reset her mistakes over, and over, and over...as things progress, she doesn't want to, doesn't want to go back to the start. Wants to keep everyone going the way they are. And so everything gains flavour and texture for her, becomes more real, and she and wee learn to care about the characters together.

The world is some fun stuff, carefully avoiding just being boilerplate fantasy with the serial numbers filed off (though maybe that's The Kingdom, heh). There's different cultures and traditions and a history at work here, and part of the story is in the way those are uncovered, as Davi steps into each new place feeling more than a little overwhelmed. We learn the history of this side of things one piece at a time, in asides and chance remarks, and occasionally on a battlefield. In any case, the world has a richness, a flavour that suggests there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, and gives us enough to let it feel real, let the stakes feel real, without overwhelming in appendices and elven dictionaries.

In the end, this is a smart, accessible and entertaining read, with some snappy fight scenes, some even snappier dialogue, some poignant character moments, and a story which promises a lot, but manages to deliver. I'm looking forward to the second book in the series, and I think you will, too.

Warlords of Wyrdwood - R.J. Barker

R.J. Barker has a reputation for writing complex, well-characterised fantasy that does the rarest thing: something new. His previous series have been great favourites of mine, as long-time readers will know, and the latest, the Forsaken series, is no different. The first book had the same depth and the same unsettling, richly detailed world as its predecessors, and so I was excited to see if Warlords of Wyrdwood would follow suit.

And you know what, it really does.

The world of Crua remains a careful blend of scintillating wonder and outright horror in equal measure. The world continues to tilt, one end of the axis becoming increasingly untenable. The rai, the magical upper classes, continue to oppress everyone around them, both systemically, and rather more immediately with the occasional fireball or on-land-drowning. Using their magic seems to drive them increasingly into sadistic cruelty, and picking at that power balance is one of the many interesting parts of the story. Are the rai cruel because their magic slowly makes them that way? Or do they have a choice, a means to become something else? Given the horror that goes into their creation (which was explored in the first book in visceral terms), the reader can even see how they were once victims, now acting out their trauma on a wider stage, seizing the sense of power and control, and slowly losing themselves. On the other hand, they incinerate people for looking at them funny, and laugh about it, so maybe I'm overthinking it. But this is a wonderful bit of exploration of class warfare. The rai are on top, and while they're more than happy to murder each other in pursuit of power, without much interest in how many "little people" are caught in the crossfire, they're also willing to turn as one on any threat to their power. And that's before we get into the Forest that sprawls across much of the story, looming larger than its trees, full of wonders to delight the soul, and horrors which will more than happily eat it - not to be malevolent, but because they do not care. The world is filled with detail and asides and little revelations that give it a flavour and texture that are different to anything else out there, and yet also very believable.

A threat like Cahan. A threat like foresters. A threat like regular people carrying bows and arrows, and willing to use them to solve problems like "Maybe if we put an arrow into that fire guy from a hundred yards away, we don't have to listen to him any more. Cahan is the catalyst for a war that's bubbling under the surface of a broader conflict, but he's not the only one. He is, to be fair, a lynchpin. A person who feels like he needs to hold everyone together, without much of an idea of how to do it. Dragged unwillingly to the head of a march for freedom, he's a man who just wanted to be left alone, who now gets to make choices about how (and if) people get to live at all. He is, to put it mildly, not excited about that. And Barker charts his character...I want to say growth, but perhaps expansion is better, as Cahan makes some rather poor choices while thinking he doesn't have any other option. On the other hand, we get to spend a lot of time with some totally new characters (no spoilers there), and watch some old friends and/or enemies figuring themselves out. It's something Barker does well, letting each viewpoint unfold enough to give us empathy, if not sympathy, and see these people thinking through their emotions and their actions, trying to understand themselves and , if not be better, at least sometimes try to be different. There's an element of sympathy for self reflection, and then there's moments where you can be wading hip deep in the icy needle consciousness of an unrepentant killer. And you know what, it all feels like it makes sense, and I spent a lot of time being surprised, and watching characters I thought I understood take opportunities to be...different. Not always better, but different! And this sort of character stretch is done with a human rawness that makes it plausible, that makes it real. 

In a world filled with trees so huge they almost dwarf the sky, where uncaring entitites of unknowable puissance lurk in the dark glades out of view, where the alien and the horribly twisted familiar are the edge of a forest away, the humanity and the cruelty and the courage and the hope pour off the page in a deeply human experience which was both incredibly tense and deeply cathartic to read. 

Overall, this is Barker at his best; thoughtful, challenging fantasy that rewards a close reading, providing characters and a world that grips the heart and characters and a story which makes it sing. Go on out and pick this one up./

On Vacation!

 Hey everyone!

We'll be back in a couple of weeks, we're going on vacation and  off the internet for a short while.

Normal service should resume shortly.