Back in 2023!

 It's the holiday season for us. I hope everyone out there has a great holiday, and we'll see you at the start of 2023 for another year of reading and talking about it!

Ashes of Man - Christopher Ruocchio

Ashes of Man is the latest in the saga chronicling the life of Hadrian Marlowe, Knight of the Solarian Empire, fast talker and swift actor, the man who wanted to speak to an alien race, and then discovered they were full of monsters, the man who found and fought some of the ancient horrors of Earth's future-past, general, sage, and quite possibly unable to die. Marlowe contains multitudes. The story is written in his voice, giving us his viewpoint and his version of events, and Marlowe is determined that he's not a hero. How he gets from where he is at the start of Ashes of Man to his nebulous, book-writing fate, is rather more unclear. But the clash between who he thinks he is, and the way the galaxy sees him is an interesting one. At the same time, we know that he has a future, at least - and by the same token, we know this is a march toward tragedy and joy in, possibly, equal measure.

 Narratively, this is beautifully crafted. Hadrian is back, rebuilding his life after a term as a POW in the hands of an enemy that is monstrous almost to a fault, creatures who regard humanity as a food source, and are prepared to have a discussion on politics ans the ethics of slavery before hanging you up by your thumbs and devouring your mates. He's not broken, Hadrian, but he's not the same either, someone coming back to terms with himself and with society. He's somewhat untethered, no longer as certain either of his own guiding lights, or of his own self-understanding. It's an interesting look for a man who has led armies, and has now stepped out of the shaodw of death and into a world that seems almost to have forgotten him while he's been away. It's a story that reaches toward reawakening, rediscovery, and change. Not all of that change is good, of course. But if The Howling Darkwas a treatise in part on the fall of man and self actualisation, this is about the rise of that man from his knees, and his determination to be better, and to fight. 

Notably, this feels like a much different book to the one before it, as a more mature Hadrian, scarred in both physical and metaphorical senses by his treatment as a prisoner, resurfaces into the world. There's high politics at play, with factions of the Empire of Man playing off one another and circling for advantage. The Cielcin are still out there too, ravaging worlds and devouring or enslaving the populous. And the Extras, those of humanity who have changed themselves boudy and soul, they're hanging on as well, always looking for means to serve their own inscrutable but typically unpleasant goals. If you're here for politics, good news! And if you're here for thoughts on what makes people who they are, or for examinations of the relationships that keep us grounded, the friendships and loves and sorrows that make us who we are, well, there's a lot of that here too. But this is also a book which packs in a heck of a lot of adrenaline, with the kind of action that can make your heart pound - from orbital bombardment and the graceful quiet dance of death among the stars, to the messy, bloody melee that happens down below, there's something fore everyone. 

And that's what this is, really, a top-notch science fiction adventure story. It's smart, it's occasionally surprisingly funny. It's heartfelt and emotional and genuine. It's bloody and deadly and unafraid. It has action, adventure and really wild things, and it has quiet human moments that remind you who you are and what you have and what you've lost. It also has swords and sorcery and techno-magery and politics and chaos, all in one wonderfully blended package. 

This is, in sum, another winner from Ruocchio; go pick it up. 

Back next week!

 Everyone's been down with the plague here for two weeks - we'll be back next week!

A Gamble of Gods - Mitriel Faywood

Full disclosure, the author asked me to read this one. But, if I'm honest, I probably would have anyway, because it combines a few things I really enjoy, and blends them up in a superlative package. There's the quick-witted, fast-mouthed swordsman, whose capacity to get into scrapes is matched only by his apparent skill at getting out of them. And the pensive, repressed scholar from a place where science has long since taken the role of magic, moving between worlds with hardly a thought, but torn from his place in the how and why of things, set adrift on the tides of circumstance. And the lady, mysterious, who walks beside them both, her internal struggles as fraught as those fought with sword and laser, carrying a power she doesn't entirely understand, and feelings she'll struggle to control.

This is A Gamble of Gods, and it's an absolute stormer of a debut, a charming, thrilling mix of science fiction and fantasy, where secret societies are running the universe behind the scenes, where a generations old conspiracy is unfolding, and where necromancy is as real, and as lethal, as a blaster bolt to the chest. But, to be up front about it, this isn't a po-faced text, filled with dour warnings and po-faced protagonists. It's a book filled with a rambunctious energy, a wry self-knowledge, and moments of on-the nose humour that made me laugh out loud more than once. It's a book which isn't afraid to dig into the emotional availability of its cast, to explore who they are, and why, and what they want; there's romance woven between the self-revelations and swordfights, the kind that balances teasing and the gentleness of emotional understanding with a soupcon of raw desire and fierce passion. 

This is a book which isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve, and I kind of love it for that.

It's also a book with a hell of a lot going on. It's spread across three main characters, and at least that many locations, including, well, London. The contemporary, British London that is, not some sort of future London in the clouds. And I'll say this, Faywood makes her London come alive. The streets are just the right kind of grey and misty, you can feel the edge of that damp cold coming into your bones as you trudge up Euston road to the office, hoping to stop at Pret for a coffee. The people have the same kind of fire and honesty and fragile bravery that you see every day at house parties and restaurant gatherings in the city. The world lives, and that's something of an accomplishment, because making somewhere that is real feel real on the page is something of a challenge. But London is joined by more exotic locales, never fear. The dark forests and palace politics, the witch-ridden geography, filled with old, deadly magics, is there too. And it feels just as plausible, just as real. And so does the purported utopia of SCIENCE(!), filled with dodgy characters of every description, whose motives are unclear and often downright Machiavellian, but who can put nanoprobes in the air, siphon data from anything, or build you an invisibility cloak. And some of them are the good guys. Maybe. Probably. 

Anyway. It's a story which is at once deadly serious, and doesn't take itself too seriously. A story which lets its characters have fun, and is fun, while also being an entertaining read, and one which kept me turning pages later into the night than I care to admit. And will probably do the same for you. Definitely worth a look!

Ocean's Echo - Everina Maxwell

Ocean's Echo is a science fiction romance novel from Everina Maxwell, whose Winter's Orbit I really enjoyed reading last year. For those of you familiar with that one: this story takes place in the same universe, but without any significant crossover in character or local setting. For those of you coming to this fresh: don't worry, it's a standalone, and you don't need to know anything going in to enjoy it. On which note: what even is it? Well, it's one part sci-fi mystery, delving for ancient relics and exploring the sociopolitical ramifications of exposing people to powers their society may not be prepared for. One part character study, exploring the emotional rocks, the trauma stricken, the self destructive - and the way those emotions, and the people they're wrapped around, can find meaning and feeling and purpose and love. It's a story laced through with action and (mis)adventure, crisis and moral choice, but it's also a story of two people reaching out expecting to be hurt, and finding each other. 

Speaking of the people, who are they? Well, one of them is Tennal. Tennal is, by his own admission, a disaster area. He's smart and funny and charming and socially adept. He can manipulate people (and does), he can read people (and does). He's also prone to making poor decisions. Or decisions which will cause the maximum amount of chaos, intentionally or otherwise. In a lot of ways, Tennal is a fuse, walking around bumping into a whole variety of lit matches. For all that, he's perhaps harder on himself than anyone. Tennal has a self image that is determined to accept and be honest about his worst qualities, but skates around his more positive ones, his live wire energy and enthusiasm, his passion and compassion, his love of family. Tennal is also running hard from being a poor little rich boy. His aunt is a high up member of planetary government, and Tennel is someone who will fight against the expectations of a path laid out for him. To some success, admittedly, but also...not. Anyway. As the story begins, Tennal finds himself rather abruply put into a new situation, and watching him rebuild himself and his image, and also try and reshape the institution's he's in, is a delight. 

In this,  the aggressively civilian Tennal is helped out by the other half of our protagonist duo, Lieutenant Surit Yeni. Surit is closed off, compartmentalised, dealing with the aftermath of family tragedy and family history. He's a perfectionist, with a memory like diamond, morals to match and an expectation that everyone around him is trying their best. That expectation is often thwarted. Surit, career military, has to work with Tennal, who is the essence of everything that Surit isn't. Initially they're like oil and water, but as the story progresses...well, you'll see. 

In any case, the characterisation here is top notch. The emotions, the drives, the needs of our characters are raw and painful and genuine, and make turning the page an absolute pleasure, trying to see what they'll get up to next. 

Which brings us to the world. This is a society which has a history of violence, of the quiet rumbling of coups. It also has, more recently, a history of audacious body modification. After some rather classified experiments, parts of the population are now architects, or readers. The former can drop short term commands to cause people to do things; they seem to be prevalent in the military command structure. The latter on the other hand, can read minds, and are something of a controlled minority, following an attempted coup a few decades before the story begins. This is a world haunted by its past, by a history of struggles for advantage, trying to decide if this is going to be the time it settles down and has a bit of a quieter period, a world still trying to work out how to deal with the mind alterers and mind readers it's it's introduced into society. A world where the military divisions are large enough and competitive enough to almost be private fiefdoms. And it's also a world that has to keep one cautious eye on the skies, because out there, a larger intra-system community is watching, and waiting for any opportunity to step in to their affairs. There is, in other words, a lot of history going on, and that history is informing this story, which also has a lot going on. The setting is plausible, the background and context introduced to the reader with a skill that means it never feels like you're just getting an infodump, while giving you a rich tapestry as background to what the characters are up to. It is, in other words, a real world. 

I don't want ot talk about the story, because spoilers, and because if I'm honest, I couldn't put it down while wanting to know what happened next, and I don't want to ruin it for you. But! Yes, there's romance in here. If you're not really here for that, I'll note that it's relatively low key, and entirely relevant to the characters and their situation. It's also gloriously queer, but that's another topic. Anyway. There's a lot of politics here. And a lot of scheme and counter scheme. There's personal drama, and the kind of individual stakes that make you gasp and feel the tension in your gut while the protagonists try and solve the unsolvable. There's ground warfare and mind powers, and lots of delving in deep space into things which perhaps would have been better left undisturbed. In short, there's a damn good story, and I encourage you to give it a try. 

Children Of Memory - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Memory is the third in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series, and much like its predecessors is, to be frank, an absolute banger of a story. It's also, that aside, a book that's difficult to describe succinctly. It's a book that grapples with big ideas about mortality and personhood, but also explores the more personal, intimate stories of people struggling to make lives in a hostile environment - and, to be fair, some of those people aren't necessarily human. That dovetailing of big ideas with emotional, honest, intimate moments is something Tchaikovsky has mastered, and it works well again here. If you're here for the raw, messy, wonderfully crafted characters, you're good. If you're here for a plot that will grab hold as tension ramps up and into catharsis and up again,..you're good. If you're here for an imaginatively crafted future and an exploration of larger concepts in a narrative framework, then again, this one's for you. Which is a long winded way of giving the short version, this is a damn good book, and you should read it. 

Speaking of the world. Well, we're in an interesting space here. Humanity is out of the bottle, in ships that can leap between solar systems, looking for any of its own. They're looking on planets that were scheduled for colonisation before the collapse of civilisation on Earth put a damper on things. Post-recovery, we're once again out here causing trouble. Though now we're doing it with friends, including sentient spiders, octopi, and bacteria which can absorb personalities and craft bodies and take them for a ride.  It's an absolutely wild space, and one that's about to get even stranger. There's two major pieces of setting at play. One is a colony, populated by humans, whose past history we're slowly exposed to over the course of the book. A hardscrabble world on the bare edge of possible survivability, and a crew struggling to make things sustainable while thawing out the frozen sleeper cargo they brought with them gives things a terrifying frontier feel.  The blend of the high tech and the low, the struggle at the edge of survivability, gives the setting an immediacy and a power it's hard to overemphasise. You can feel for these people, scrounging out a life from soil they have to make live for them, while overhead a sleeper ship circles in high orbit. And then, well, then there's the birds. Survivors of a research and terraforming team gone horribly wrong after collapse, evolving under pressure into duos that between them manage a convincing appearance of sentience, but individually definitely aren't. As characters they're fantastic, and I'll chat a bit more about that in a second, but wanted to say that the history of these duos, the desperation of a team trying to build something from the wrong side of societal collapse, that history is fantastic, Vividly imagined, authentically described, laced with the emotion and passion and horror that makes for authentic life.

The characters match that feeling actually. There's the captain of the slow seed ship, desperately trying to pull tech and crew from the shattered remnants of his craft, and build a civilisation back up from nothing. Surrounded by his command crew and survivors, you can feel the pressure on them all, you can feel the passion and energy that animates a people who know that their survival is not guaranteed. Who know that the survival of everyone after them is not guaranteed. Who know they have to build something. They're people, top to toe. But the same is true of the ravens, talking to each other and construction their discussions with other people in terms of cultural references and constructed meaning. They're people, even if they're different. And the people of our future, the octopi and the living gestalts and the spiders and the humans learning to be better. They're all people, even in they're not all humans. And the differences of their lived experience are often, though not always subtle. And it's amazing how they all feel like people, but they also feel strange. But they feel genuine, and that's what matters - the experiences are comprehensible but different, and that's sometimes hard to get used to, but it's also an absolute delight. These are living breathing real people, they're just different to us, and how we expect to be. But they're amazingly well realised, and great fun to read. 

Which is true of the story too. I won't spoil it , because there's some twists in there that took me a little while to absorb. But I will say that it works across multiple layers. This is a story which explores what it means ot be sentient. Explores the collapse and rebuilding of societies. Explores how people cope and manage in crisis. Explores identity and reality. But also explores family relationships and friendships and meaning. It doesn't shy away from either of these, and builds a story that is emotionally wracking but also an extremely compelling page-turner of action and adventure and mystery as a result. 

Which brings me back to the beginning: this book is an absolute banger, Tchaikovsky has hit it out of the park again, and you should, if you're a sci-fi fan, read it

Blackbirds - Chuck Wendig

So, Blackbirds. I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but better late than never. It’s the first in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series, walking alongside a woman who, on skin contact, will see how someone is going to die. Black is smart, but as sharp and cutting as strong acid. She’s hurt, and willing to let her life tailspin until, well, it doesn’t. In the meantime, she moves between jobs, between towns, between dead people, just keeping the wolf from the door, and trying not to think too hard. The universe, of course, has other plans. 

This story feels, in a lot of ways, like a contemporary thriller. Miriam Black is on the run in an America we can all recognise from television. Maybe not one we’d especially like to visit though. Cookie-cutter suiburbanism is elsewhere. These are the cockroach riddled motel rooms, the truck stop bathrooms, the silent depths of the US experience, writ large on its public consciousness. There’s something weirdly private about it too - Miriam navigates her mental geograpy as much as the physical, but both are more and less than they seem on the surface, and both have absolutely no shortage of nasty surprises. This is a space of movement, of transience, where nobody stays for long, and nobody wants to, skipping from town to town in beat up junkers or hitching a ride in a long haul truck cab while trying not to do a line of coke off the dashboard. It’s a sparse, grim place, and I’ll give Wendig credit, he evokes it with a lean, tight prose that makes you feel like you’re there, filling in the gaps between the words with, usually, something worse. It’s also a world filled with abrupt and occasionally lurid violence. Shootings, torture, bladed weapons, and some truly brutal, intimate hand to hand fighting. It’s all here, and approached in an unflinching way which, if I’m honest, didn’t sit well with me. It felt a little too much for its own sake. That said, I also know it works for a lot of people, and as a style and mood choice it fits perfectly with the story presented, so I can’t get too upset. But, you know, go in with a gore warning in front of you, and maybe take some goggles and a plastic apron,  just in case.

Speaking of the unpleasant, well, Miriam Black is not a good time protagonist. She’s smart, obviously, but miserable, seemingly getting by on not much more than coffee and attitude. Her expectations are relentlessly low, and her miserableness, her sharp edges, and her low opinion of everyone else are saturated through every line of the story. Miriam is not a nice person, and she makes a lot of bad choices because she doesn’t believe she deserves better ones. As the narrative expands, some of the forces behind her current situation become less occluded, and who she is and why she is that way make more sense. But it’s a hard read, a dive into sorrow and depression and violence. As a character, Miriam Black is wonderfully drawn, and entirely believable, but sharing her perspective is an experience that it took me several coffees to come to terms with.  The same is true of most of the cast, to be honest, though we see most of them from a little further away than Miriam’s head. They’re almost all awful in some way or another, almost all people you’d gladly push down a mineshaft, but for all that, they’re perfectly plausible as people, terrible as they may be . A few rays of light here and there mean things aren’t quite as dark as all that, but still. Again, be ready for that sort of mood-lowerer going in. 

Having said that, the story itself is a good time. It rattles along with enthusiasm, giving us interludes in Miriam’s past, slowly building her up and out from our first impression, putting in details and shifts that change our perspective even as we walk alongside her. There’s a lot going on in this one, to be fair. Murders. Drugs. Chases across country. Interrogations. Surreal antagonists. Romance, and well, not-romance. Gunfights and aftermaths. It’s a story filled with emotional moments, stitched together by violence and loss. Did I always want to keep reading? No. But did I always turn the page anyway to see what happened next? Yes. 

I’m not sure how I feel about this, in the end. If you’re in the mood for a violent supernatural thriller that’s also a slice of Americana gone bad, you’ll love it, that’s for sure - this one’s for you.

Out due to illness

 Sorry friends - everyone in the house has been sick for a week, so going to delay todays post until next week!

The Mystical Murders of Yin Mara - Marshall Ryan Maresca

 

The Mystical Murders of Yin-Mara is a novella length piece from Marshall Ryan Maresca, whose Maradaine books I've enthused about here, from time to time. While it's set in the same universe, this book has a different geography and a different cast, though it still has the same crackling energy and heart as its antecedents. It's smart, occasionally funny, and blends highwire tension with an honesty and emotional depth that's always a winning combination. 

Yin-Mara is a city at the edge of the world. At least as far as our protagonists are concerned, anyway. Heading out of the cosmopolitan city of Maradaine, to start  a promising academic partnership, the two find themselves walking into a space that is very different to what they're familiar with. From the cusinine to the law enforcement, they do things differently there. Regular Maradaine readers will see a few nods to familiar institutions - particularly law enforcement - but the customs, the language, the presumptions that underpin culture, those are all different here. But what isn't different is the sense of place. A place where you can get sausage and cabbage rolls and a half decent beer. Where most people are just trying to get by, day to day. That some of them are trying to get by with a bit of backstreet magic, or by investigating the gruseome demise of other residents, well, that's by the by.

Except, of course, that it isn't. Because as we come in, our protagonists find themselves torn between the demands of an academic career in magery (including research, arguments with their supervisor, and kowtowing to the nobility who fund everything) and the less lucrative investigation of the aforesaid brutal murders - victims drained dry of life, husks suggesting that it was rather painful too. Something is stalking the streets of Yin-Mara, striking seemingly at random. Whether or not our protagonists will be able to figure out what it is and what it wants before they attract its attention is another matter.. Maresca builds out a cracking thriller from this fairly simple premise. Anyone or anything could be the killer, and as the list of victims starts to ramp up, the question of whether our heroes are stalking it, or it's stalking them becomes rather pressing. The tension ratchets up masterfully, and it certainly left me turning pages rather later at night than I should have been awake, because I wanted to know what happened next.

The emotional heart of the story are Phadre and Jiarna, our protagonists. Young, smart, determined to get somewhere in the world, they've set out into their great adventure with enthusiasm, and with each other. The genuine affection and emotional closeness on the page is visible throughout the story. A pair in love, determined to do not just the necessary thing, but the right thing. Of course this doesrather tend to land them in trouble. But between the magic of one and the razor-sharp mind and iron determionation of the other, there's no obstacle they can't at least attempt to overcome. In their struggles, their failures and successes, their disagreements, make-ups and quiet moments, they steal every page they're on, and I look forward to seeingmore.

That applies to the whole book, really. Yin-Mara is a place crying out for further exploration, and our protagonists are an entertaining, likable duo you can empathise and sympathise with. The story zips along and never outstays its welcome -- but I would happily read more of it, please. If you're looking for a thoughtful, thrilling murder mystery with a dash of magic, this one's for you.

Brief outage - back next week!

Apologies for the delay folks - our internet is out.

Back once that's resolved!

The Refrigerator Monologues - Catherynne M. Valente

The Refrigerator Monologues is one part superhero deconstruction, one part empowerment of women, one part emotional catastrophe, and all parts acidly funny. I just want to get that out there now. It’s smart, and funny, and unflinching in its exploration of what it means to be, and what it feels like to be a woman, trapped in a world where men are defaulted to being better, and where superheroes are at the apex of casual privilege. Which may sound a bit overwrought - I can only assure you that it isn’t, that it’s a good time, that it offers up a haunting and sharp perspective on the way we treat one half of our society, but that it also builds up people you care about, tells and shows you their stories, and has a good time doing it. 

“Fridging” was coined as a way to describe the way the love interests of overwhelmongly male superheroes would typically be murdered in the first act of their stories, the deaths of wives and girlfriends being used to motivate the hero. They weren’t really seen as a person in themselves - instead they were just an object that we pinned “revenge” or “emotional catharsis” to. Nobody wanted to talk about the women themselves, how they ended up in the fridge, and about the fact they were just as interesting and worthwhile as the superheroes they were connected to. 

This book sets out to change that; it’s centred on a small club of the relatively recently deceased, who meet and drink coffee in the afterworld, learning each other’s stories, and supporting each other. It’s surprisingly wholesome, though the members range from the dimensionally challenged, through super-scientists to, well, actual villains. But they’re all here now because their lives were seen as part of someone else's story. And credit to the author, she brings the voices of these people back to the fore. Each has a chapter of their own, laying out the story of their life, their death, how they got there. From the Atlantean Princess to the sometime demigod, and back around to the once-photographer, they’re a diverse bunch. And the stories reflect this, as do the voices they use to tell the, That said, there’s a unifying theme in the confidence each story provides, the way it’s paced to allow it to be spoken aloud, and in the sense that these voices are powerful, and have been marginalised by something flashier but ultimately less interesting. 

Honestly, it’s hard to talk about the stories in this book without spoiling them. So I’ll just say this: the moments in these pages did, on occasion, actually make me laugh out loud. They did, on occasion, raise an eyebrow or a smile. Sometimes they carried a real emotional punch, something that made me need to put the book down for a few minutes, and think it through. They were real, fierce, angry, thoughtful, funny, deeply true stories. Stories that speak to the way superhero stories treat women, and also about the way we treat superhero stories, and about the kind of stories we want to tell, the kind of heroes we want to talk about. This is a book that gets all that in but also tells genuine, interesting, emotionally human stories, stories that make sense, or at least try to make sense of the world we’re in and the stories we tell ourselves.

Reading this is a good time, and it was a fast, snappy read, but also a thoughtful, and sometimes an emotional one. I’d say if you enjoy comics, or superhero stories, or women pushing back on their marginalisation, or, you know, all three, then this is a great book for you. It certainly was for me. 

Children of Chicago - Cynthia Pelayo

Children of Chicago is a horror-mystery hybrid from Cynthia Pelayo, and is, by turns, intriguing, eerie, and chilling in equal measure. If you think you’d enjoy a blend of police procedural and slow-burning horror, then you’ll probably have a good time with this one. 

The book follows Lauren Medina, a young homicide detective, burdened with past trauma. Medina struggles with the mysterious murder of her sister when they were both children, and the gaps in her memory that surround it. She’s built a life around those gaps, and is driven to try and bring justice to other victims, to make the unknown more visible. Medina is closed in on herself, pushing people away because she thinks they’re going to be hurt if they stick too close to her. And there’s always the possibility that she may be right about that. Pelayo draws her protagonist with a fine brush, letting us see the wounds and scars that have closed her up, the marriage on the edge, or past the edge, of failure. The desire to prevent harm, and the obsession it brings that may be past the border of healthy. Medina is a woman on the brink of crisis, following ghosts,snatching victories where she can while fuelled by good coffee and bad food. 

The story also explores her relationships, both old and new. There’s the aforementioned marriage, but also a look into the family that shaped her even as it fractured. The way her father, also a police officer, was drawn into a morass of cases, never able to stop working, something Medina mirrors - though her memories of him are typically warm and understanding. THe way her maternal figures were absent or less than approving. It shapes her, this dynamic - and you see that in her interactions. You see it in the way she eyes her partner with suspicion, and in the way that working with her father’s old partner as a mentor lets her relax herself, just a little. Pelayo has wound her protagonist almost as tight as she can go, and the question is perhaps where she’ll put all that energy when she unravels. 

There’s other characters of course, other views. I won’t spoil it, but I will say that there’s some portrayals here of both innocents and killers that ring true. Some are delightfully creepy, each turn of the page giving us the mundane, obscurely familiar roots of dissatisfaction that lead to murder. You can read these pages and feel the sad, petty reality of killers - even as the supernatural element spreads through the story like ripples in a pond. There’s something behind the killers, behind the murders, a force of nature, or something else, but it slithers and strides behind a façade of normality. There’s an honesty to the terror, a rawness to it, that feels human in the same way that the grubby details of the crimes, the motives, do too. 

Speaking of facades of normality: This is very much a book set in Chicago. If the name didn’t give it away, the lavish descriptions and interjections on the history and folklore of the city certainly will. I thought they were great, honestly, as someone who doesn’t know much about the city; they gave it a depth, a grace and shadow that I wouldn’t have felt otherwise. That said, if you’re not here for a love letter to the Windy City, you might find the digressions less helpful. Personally, I enjoyed them - they made the city feel alive, like another character rather than a stage to be played upon. And the history of Chicago, even that small portion explored here, is a dark one on occasion. 

There’s some nice twists and turns here, and the story takes some unexpected pivots as it gets where it’s going, exploring the Pied Piper myth in a more modern setting, exploring a deal where the price is the lives of children, drawn into the depths and never seen again. This is a modern fairy tale, but one explicitly in the mode of Grimm rather than Disney - a fairly tale where rewards are uncertain, and costs can be both high and gruesome. 

Is it a good story? In short: hell yes. If you find the nights drawing in a bit, and you want to feel that chill down your spine, then this is the book for you.

All The Seas of the World - Guy Gavriel Kay

Regular readers will know I'm a huge fan of Guy Gavriel Kay. His lyrical prose, and careful blending of a slightly alternative historical reality with just a soupcon of the different, the magical, well, it's a joy. Every book manages to make me think about life in a different way, and each book manages to make me feel, deeply, as I fly through its pages. All The Seas of the World is no exception. It's a book with a story that'll keep you turning pages late at night to find out what happens next, but it's also more than that. It's an opportunity to think about the role of small decisions and coincidences, and the way they shape lives. It's an opportunity to think about the ripples our steps cause in the lives of others. And it's an opportunity to explore agency, the way we act on the world.  This is a story which, amongst other things, wants to explore the nature of lives and stories, the way the tales we tell ourselves and others are intertwined into a complex web of different expectations and understandings, and common ground between.

Anyway. That's all to say this is a book which manages to balance several plates; not just ponderously ruminating on the human condition, but doing so as flashes of lightning across the sky of a narrative that, well, it does a lot, from assassinations and coups to business ventures and sieges. 

In terms of world: this is set in the same world as many of Kay's other alternate-history tales; in this case it feels a lot like some of the early renaissance republics of Italy, with the serial numbers filed off. There's that sense of a mercantile class shifting around the boundaries of aristocracy. The feeling that the centres of power in the world are shifting. The sense that identity is becoming more mutable, perhaps. Or perhaps not. One of the things the book does is dive into the idea of home, and of self, and whether people are the culture they were born into , or the one they were exposed to, or if they shape themselves under or outside of those pressures. It also looks at the costs of breaking with established homes, of walking away from situations as they get out of control, and the costs that come with staying to struggle under the weight of those situations as well. Many of the characters here are trying to decide who they are, in one way or another, and in trying to define and decide that, they shape not only themselves, but a broader conversation. 

In any case, the world is a lush, rich, baroque one. Kay's vivid prose fills it with life and energy, and a wry humanity, voices filled with affection, violence, horror, joy, passion, love, and, from time to time, outright stupidity. The world lives and breathes and fights and builds and burns and shines on the page. From the soaring stone buildings of an ersatz Republic, to the sun-drenched cracked flagstones of border forts on the boundary of states in a cold war turning hot, there's an energy and a life that makes the backgrop feel like a living world, one that feels real. 

The same applies to the characters, honestly. I don't want to dive inot them in detail, in part to avoid spoilers. But it's always nice to see Kay approach larger issues tangentially, through the eyes of characters who live alongside great events and people we remember from history. This is a story about people who aren't central to the "great individual" theory, but whose choices matter, whose lives matter, whose humanity matters. There's a central duo here, and it's always great to see a well-drawn female protagonist, and some solid minority representation on the page. The pair are smart, and by turns smart, funny, serious and deadly. Really, they're everything that people are, especially people pushed to find their limits and their boundaries in the face of unexpected threats and opportunities.

The story itself is a complex set of interwoven threads, tying characters together half a world apart, or right next to each other. There's murder, mystery, and more than a little mayhem. There's a dash of romance mixed in there, and some lovely platonic interaction by people who give a damn. Chases and battles of wits and unfortunate coincidences and serendipity and blood on the floor and gold in the hand and passion and laughter and tears and, well, life. 

This is a damn good story, and if you're an existing fan, it's a damn good Kay story. Go get it.

The Assassins of Consequence - Marshall Ryan Maresca

Marshall Ryan Maresca's Maradaine series started with "The Thorn", a university student turned vigilante, with something of a murky past. The series quickly broadened in scope to follow multiple characters in stories of their own, from working beat cops to literal knights in shining armour. But Veranix was the first face of Maradaine. It's fitting, therefore, that in The Assassins of Consequence, his be the first story picked up after the explosive events of the last book, which brought all the various characters together, and lit a fuse. The consequences of the following explosion in the metaphorical fireworks factory are reverberating through the world of Maradaine - and through Veranix. 

This Veranix is a mixture of the familiar and the strange. Always a little cocky, he's now trying to risk less, to keep himself and his friends as far out of trouble as he can, while also fighting crime, scowling broodingly from rooftops, and, oh, yes, being a magic student at the university. The university, incidentally, has recently had its magical programme taken over by what passes for a branch of Maradaine's military intelligencee service. Quite why, is another matter entirely. But in terms of chracter, the change dislodges Veranix from his comfort zone. It puts academic pressure on him, it puts demands on him that come backed with social legitimacy. While he's inching closer to his goal of bringing down organised crime boss Fenmere, he's doing so with other pressing calls on his attention. Our superhero is growing up, and not only finding out that heroism has costs, but that both he and others will be forced to bear them, whether they will or not. The text does show us the Veranix we know, in witty banter, athletic leaps from rooftop to rooftop, and daring escapes. But there's a pensiveness, and moments of introspection that suggest the Thorn is more troubled than before, more drawn to being, well, Veranix.

There's some excellent turns by Veranix's gang of do-gooders as well. They're all hanging together, trying to work together to make things better. But they're all pulled by conflicting priorities, loyalties, and their own needs. Sometimes, fighting the good fight in a cape isn't very rewarding, and sometimes you might get appalled at the costs, in life, treasure, and humanity. As a group, Veranix's support team are a joy - each a fully realised individual, with a story

The villains are entertaining, though I must confess that in this case there were rather a lot of them. Fenmere, always the overarching threat, and a host of Veranix's past conquests, getting the band backl together in a jailbreak to go mess him up. And rumblings of others still to come. They're fun to read though, seeing the other side in the vein of Suicide Squad. There's enough moments of humour and humanity to help them not just feel like ciphers, even if the narrative focus is on their grudge, and their scheme to finish it - which, incidentally, includes identifying Veranix, and feeding back into the question of who the man who is The Thorn would be, if he didn't have The Thorn to be any longer.

I won't speak much on Maradaine the city, because I've waxed lyrical on it before. Suffice to say it remains a vibrant, living world. There's ahistory there that you can feel in your bones. And if we don't see as much of it this time around as we have before, we still have the flavour and colour in asides and moments of reflection. Maradaine lives, friends, Maradaine lives. This time it lives in its slums and dockhouses, worn down inns and flashing knives. It lives in its quadrangles and literal walled gardens. In faculty meetings and gang interrogations. It's aplace, still, with depth, and weight.

Anyway. Is it good, then? I don't want to spoil the story, because this one is laced through with turns, twists, chases, escapes, derring-do, moral crises and just plain old crises. I will say that I read it quickly, that I wanted to get to the end and I didn't want it to end. It's maybe not an ideal option for your first Maradaine book (but don't worry, there are lots of entry choices!); but if you're a regular reader, this one is going to follow you around the room. It's great fun, and a great read.

Braking Day - Adam Oyebanji

Braking Day is a sci-fi novel by Adam Oyebanji. It takes place across a small fleet of generation ships, as they come to the end of their journey. Soon, they're going to reach the point at which they beign to slow down ("Braking Day), and prepare to enter and colonise a new star system. But before they do, there are going to be some dark answers given to hard questions. Old mysteries are going to be dug up and dragged into the light. The survival of the society on the ships, indeed the survival of the ships themselves, may hang in the balance.

And the feather tipping that balance is a young man who just wants to be left alone, left to do his job in peace, to maybe get a promotion, to maybe change things a little. He may get rather more than he's bargained for. 

All of that sounded rather portentuous, so to save you a longer read, the tl;dr is that Braking Day is a fun, snappy sci-fi yarn. It builds out a believable inter-generational society for its ships, one which has genuine problems baked in, but isn't a theocracy or raving anarchy. It shows us young, smart people trying to do the right thing, and older, debatably as smart people whose perspective on what the right thing is may differ. It explores social class and asks questions about wha we choose to remember and to forget.But in etween the big questions it has a fast-paced action adventure story going on, with a delightful soupcon of mystery about it.

Our protagonist is Ravi Macleod, an officer candidate on one of the ships, and from a family that are very much the wrong side of the tracks. He suffers from discrimination on one side, and from disappointment on the other. His fellow students think he's a criminal, and his family aren't entirely sure he's not becoming just another member of the elite looking to put them down. Ravi, through it all, is thoughtful, conscientious, and perhaps a little prone to being led by his emotions. He carries his flaws well, though, and the story gives him the chance to be articulate and likable. If I was occasionally driven to a shake of the head at a moment of naivete, still it was possible to feel an honest joy in those moments as well, to see someone reaching out for the better option, rather than the least worst. Ravi is an excellent portrayal of a young man stepping out onto unsure footing, looking to find something of himself between the metal walls that he calls home. And he's helped by a rather fun ensemble cast. Honestly, I wanted to see more of all of them, but a shout out in particular to his cousin Boz, a young woman with a word-weary attitude decades odler than she is, but with the fire and ideals to try and make change and break things whe needed. She's an excellent foil for Ravi, and their interplay of outlooks was always a genuine delight.

They exist on one of three generation ships, creaking, much repaired vessels sailing the wine-dark sea of space. Those craft have seen their shar eof triumphs and tragedies etched inot their skins, and we see a lot of references to their history, both implicit and explicit. it's a credit to the author that the Archimedes, Ravi's ship, feels like a real, lived in space. From its battered duct-work to lost compartments, from the engineering core buried levels deep to the bar-slash movie theatre the kids go to, the environment has a humanity to it, an energy which says that this is a real space. Some of that is georpahy played out as politics, too; the tensions between a class of semi-hereditary officers and those beneath them is often palpable. Those at the bottom of the ladder are a few bad choices form being stuffed into the recycler as biomass. The ships feel their age, feel like decisions have been made there, catastrophes and triumphs all - and the socity they've built feels human too. Laced through with flaws, open to corruption, someimes driven by poor or terrible choices, but in the end, something built by people trying to do their best, trying to survive.

And the story. Ah, well, no spoilers. But this one went places I didn't expect from the jump. It's one part mystery, one part coming of age tale, one part adventure epic - and you know what, all of those parts are rather good. Importantly, it asks big questions, human questions, which will make you think - but it asks them while you're having so much fun following along that you may ot notice for a little bit. 

In summary, it's a fun story, with interesting things to say, with solid characterisation in a well-drawn world. That makes it a solid purchase, if you're in need of a generation ship mystery (and who isn't?!).

Kingdoms of Death - Christopher Ruocchio

Christopher Ruocchio’s Kingdoms of Death is the fourth in his Sun Eater series, centred around Hadrian Marlowe, a knight errant, an occasional politician, an excellent strategist, and someone who looks sceptically at their own legend. Marlowe lives in the bounds of an Empire of Man, where the gene-modified aristocracy live over generations of their subjects. Where Roman and monarchial cultural trappings live cheek-by-jowl with starships pathing the dark distances between the stars. Where legions of sword-and-laser wielding legionnaires spend centuries in cryo-sleep on troop barges before landing in the face of the alien or transhuman menace. 

Marlowe has seen more of that menace than most. He’s seen the shifting madness of transhuman technophiles, whose consciousness, skipping from body to body, seems to have lost something of its humanity in the process. He’s seen the raw tentacles of ancient, caged AI, lashing against the bars, speaking in a thousand tongues of the future and the past. He’s seen the shadow government of his own Empire, the inquuisition that seeks to cut out corruption, alien or human, brutally and swiftly, often in ignorance.And he’s seen the beasts that stalk the stars, the alien, the Cielcin.

*** Potential spoilers past this point ***

The Cielcin are the focus of a lot of this book, and, fair warning, it is a big book. Marlowe explores both Cielcin society and his own limits. Brought into the depths of their world as a captive, he’s tortured, abandoned, experimented on, tortured again. In suffering their may be some measure of truth, and that’s doubly true for the reader. We can see Marlowe pared down to his core, stripped of rank, position and indeed clothes. Left to die, or not, left to live, or not. To go mad, to decide his own fate, or settle on his own sacrifice. 

The Cielcin are not gentle on prisoners, no. Mostly, they eat prisoners. But Marlowe, him they have other plans for. The society we see painted out before us is one that is uncompromising, brutal and ancient. It has ritual and faith in its own fashion, and within their own lights, the Cielcin are in the right in their struggle to, well, eliminate humanity and use them as food.

 The author shows us that society in all its grotesque, near-human horror - from the military parades and processions, to the vicious dance of lethal politics, to the banquets on the flesh of men, and back around again, to the cultured leader who can sit and hold a nuanced dialogue, and break a subordinate with a word, can order atrocities without a qualm. This is a society that feels genuinely alien, off kilter, different to our understanding - it exists slightly outside our frame of reference in its strange familiarity. And the writer has made this work, in its magnificence and horror - so kudos. You really do feel dipped, all unwilling, into a ferocious and alien society, one which operates by its own rules, and doesn’t look on humanity as potential partners as much as threats or a food source. This is a universe with a dark mysticism and a strangeness, laced through with the baroque terrors and wonders and fragility of humanity. 

The world building, in other words, is superb. 

The character work is of a similar quality. I’ve touched on the alienness, the uncanny-seeming nature of the Cielcin. But we also spend a lot of time with Marlowe, inside his head, as he slowly breaks down, breaks away from the trappings of himself. In his suffering, depression, possible madness over years of Cielcin captivity, he gains something in self knowledge, something in understanding of the world and himself. He also gets quite a comprehensive journey through pain, desolation and suffering. But the journey, from Hadrian the knight, the killer, the once-hero of the Empire, down to Had the man, the person at the core of the outer whirl of values and worries, what remains in extremis, that journey is a long and sometimes insightful one. But it’s also a dark one filled with blood and tears and truly wretched horrors, and so I say be warned - but also, that in terms of characterisation, this is pitch-perfect, this gives us a chance to sit with Hadrian, to see him as he is and as he sees himself change, and we wrench and fall and sympathise and empathise with him as he struggles against his own desecration and diminution. Will things get better? You’ll have to read the book to see, but Hadrian, him came to know right well. 

The story, well, in many places it’s meditatively paced, slowly steeping the reader in the gentle and pervasive atrocity of horror in which Hadrian finds himself immersed. But there are moments of pure joy here too, moments of glinting starships trading fire, glimpses of heroism and personal sacrifice to make you weep. There’s snappily-drawn, uncompromising combat, both the tactical surge of laser fire, and the razor-edged, bloody tear of blade on blade. There’s time for love, too, and the kind of friendship and comradeship that can make your chest ache with it. Basically, this is a damn good story, hitting all the right notes - and one that will reward long time readers and leave them asking for more. 

It’s a very good book, an excellent addition to the series, and you should definitely go and pick it up

Back soon!

 Schedule is going to be off for a few weeks as we're moving house and that is...exhausting and hectic. 

But we'll be back soon!

Born For Trouble: The Further Adventures of Hap and Leonard - Joe. R. Lansdale

Born for Trouble is a collection of novellae and short stories in the universe of Hap and Leonard, issued from the pen of the prolific and always hugely entertaining Joe. R. Lansdale. Those of you who follow this blog on the regular will know that I’ve been a big fan of Hap and Leonard, and their various misadventures, for years. Getting another slice of East Texas mayhem and found-family affection is always a treat. And so it proves here!

I will say that if you’re a fan of the series, this is likely going to hit the spot for you. A newcomer will find it accessible and entertaining too, but might be advised to dig into the larger series as well. But either way, the crux of the thing: what is it, is it well written, do I want to spend money on it?

Lets start at the end. Yes. If you’re looking for more Hap & Leonard, this is going to meet your needs. Opening it up and reading through the stories, filled with warm banter, cold violence and a sense of place that you can feel in your bones…well. It’s like slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes, which…may also happen to be a little bloodstained. 

The stories themselves are, well, delightful, in the way they blend the weird and the prosaic. The way they bring to life a Texan swamp jungle in one breath, filled with predatory animals and people, and in the next ask us to consider the mundane, intimate absurdity of tracking down a lost stuffed dog. Though that one does go somewhere rather unexpected, come to think of it. In any case, they’re the sort of stories I’ve come to these books to read. Filled with a low-key camaraderie from the leads, a kind of low-key simmering energy which makes their loyalties and joy in each other obvious, while also not being afraid to let them run their mouths and give each other crap in an endless game of fat-chewing. Filled with vivid descriptions that manage to ensure that particular neck of Texas feels alive to me, feels real  and is unflinching in showing off the horror and the death in it, but the beauty as well. 

And the plots have that blend to them as well. From a dead child in a bookmobile, to the aforementioned stuffed dog, to the stalking of a psychologist - there’s no turning away from the reality of crime, or the sordid nature of much of its motivations. But it’s never unfair - you always know as much as the protagonists do, and if you’re as baffled as they are, well, that’s probably just as well.And the stories themselves…well, they’re Lansdale in fine form. Smartly paced, they’ll keep you turning pages. But they’re also clever, twisty, a little dark, sometimes surprisingly poignant, and usually able to elicit some genuine laughter too. Because they’re looking at people, at Hap and Leonard, and also at all the folks around them, their family, their friends, and the psychology of the people and events they’re looking into. 

I don’t want to touch too much on the boys themselves here. I will say that Hap and Leonard’s genuine affection for each other, a friendship that seems to have long ago swerved into brotherhood, is palpable on the page. And it makes me happy to see that kind of relationship brought to the fore - two men working side by side, sharing hope and loss and dreams, and managing to do it without being appallingly toxic. They’re good lads, those two, and the heart of every story is the way they know each other. Which isn’t to say there isn’t some shit-talking and some very hurtful remarks about vanilla cookies. But still. It is worth noting that the boys themselves remark on their getting older, and Hap, at least, is starting to feel the effects of the pressure of their adventures - and it’s wonderful to see these stories look unflinchingly at depression, at trauma, at the costs of violence - and do so in a way which still feel real and human. 

Which isn’t to say it’s all doom and gloom. Far from it.in the end, these stories are fun. They’ll make you feel, though, and no shame in that, cry and laugh while you try and figure out what the heck is going on, and then nod knowingly when the criminals are revealed or comeuppances are issued. 

So, to circle back toi the point I drifted off of up there: what is it? It’s more Hap & Leonard. Is it well written? Yes, yes it is. Should you buy it? Abso-bloody-lutely. 

The Girl and the Moon - Mark Lawrence

Okay, so The Girl and the Moon. What is it? Well, it’s the concluding novel in Mark Lawrence’s The Book of the Ice trilogy. And it’s also bloody brilliant. 

That reaction probably isn’t a great surprise to most of you, who know I’ve been a fan of Mark’s work for quite a while now. But I want to emphasise it again, for those of you nodding along and saying “Yeah but you like everything he writes”. Yes. Yes I do. It’s intelligently written, with complex characterisation which builds complicated, human characters out of hardship, friendship, and the occasional bout of violence. It’s written with an eye to a world which makes sense, which is rich in detail, which has a history that we’d love to see mor e of, even as we soak up the grandeur, strangeness and similarities unrolling in front of us. And it has stories that make you want to keep reading. That last one, perhaps most of all. It blends together characters and world and story into a delightful narrative gumbo, one which it’s impossible to stop eating. I mean reading. 

And all of those traits are on display here. Yes.  But this one is a stunner, even by the usual high standard for Lawrence’s work. My initial review was just a line that said “I was up until one-thirty in the morning reading this, and I have no regrets”. That is still very true. And I have every expectation that if you’ve come along on the journey of Yaz and her friends, as they trudged through endless ice, through the subterranean husks of haunted worlds, and through the under currents of their own understanding…well, then you won’t have any regrets reading this, either. 

I will make one caveat: this is the final book in a trilogy. There is a summary of the previous two books at the front, so if you haven’t read the first two in a while, that’ll brush up your memory. And if you haven’t read either of them, you could probably use that summary to come in and not be entirely lost. But really, if you’re new to the series, go back to the start, you won’t regret it. 

Which is a whole lot of words just to say, this is a book that anyone invested in Yaz’s story, and the world of Abeth, should read. But you should. Go get a copy!

I don’t want to mine too deep, for fear of spoilers, but let’s talk a little bit about Abeth. It’s a world we’ve seen before (in the Red Sister series), but mostly the nicer, sunny bits, filled with politics, magic and murder. And then we’ve had The Book of the Ice, which has been filled with a lot of, well, if we’re honest, ice. And also some magic, and, yes, sometimes a murder. But we’ve seen characters moved out of their element, seen them adapt, work together, understand each other, and push forward together. Here, they’re doing something a little different - stepping into a climate that isn’t trying to kill them, and into a society which operates by different rules, and may well, in fact, try to kill them. The sense of personal connection and social disconnection is done beautifully, as our intrepid band rapidly find themselves out of their depth. They have each other to rely on, but they don’t know the rules, and they don’t know how to survive in a world which isn’t bounded by the necessity of subsistence survival. From a characterisation point of view, this is beautifully done - watching new bonds form, watching each of Yaz’s friends, and Yaz herself, struggle with the idea of abundance, in even a transient sense. Watching them try to understand what it is that drives people with so much to do some pretty awful things. And it also says to the reader, I think, that these strangers in a strange land, they’re not stupid, or bad, or wrong in their strangeness, they just operate in a different context. Something we could all stand to think about in our own lives, perhaps. 

It’s great to see Yaz taking the lead here, a woman who has really been growing into herself. Deciding who she is and what she actually wants has always been a struggle, and we’ve seen that before in the fragments of “devils” that she’s encountered, broken pieces of their former selves. But Yaz is taking hold of parts of herself and examining them, holding onto them, making her sense of self something she shapes, something not defined by the expectations of those around her. That’s a powerful message, and one that will resonate strongly with a lot of readers. And, to be fair to Yaz, she does this while also kicking some serious butt, getting an understanding of her own emotional vulnerabilities, planning to save the world, and making new friends. Basically, Yaz is awesome. And she’s backed by an amazing supporting cast, from nefarious unspeakable ancient evils, right through to the mechanised spirit of a teenage ancestor, and out the other side to familiar faces from the ice plains. And she’s going to meet more than a few new friends and enemies in this story, too (and there’s some connections into Lawrence’s other work, if you’re paying attention).

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. 

Yaz is great, a protagonist with a fascinating perspective, and with energy and resilience that makes her a pleasure to follow along with. Her fellow cast add excellent flavour to the stew - as does Abeth itself, a rich world with a diverse, multi-layered history which I’d love to explore further. And the story, as I said way back at the start of this review, was one that kept me up until waaaaay too late. It kept me turning pages, and it’ll do the same for you.

So we’re back to the top, and the big question is, should you read this? Yes, yes you should. As fast as you can! 

Eyes of the Void - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Eyes of the Void is the sequel to the excellent Shards of Earth, which we reviewed, well, far too long ago now. I think the sequel must have been held up by the pandemic. But in any case, it's going to be on shelves soon, so it's time to give it a look and see whether it's worth reading. .

Yes.

Just wanted to get that out of the way right off the bat. This is top quality space opera. It has characters you can sympathise with, and empathise with. It has some aliens that feel like people, but also feel different, with perspective soutside our experience. It has some humans that feel like aliens, too. Some because they've modified themselves in personal ways that change the way they present, some because of the way their society shaped them, and some just because their perspective has shifted out past the lens of common experience. This is one of Tchaikovsky's strenghts: giving us a vast array of different possibilities embodied in people. This is a universe steeped in the waters of conflict, one aware of the costs, but it's also a universe teetering on the ege of transhumanism, of defining, redefining and ignoring what different people think it means to be human. The breadth of imagination on display is stunning. From the technologically super-powered clams, whose dialogue is delphic enough it requires interpretation by human acolytes, through the society of tank-grown women, determined to save both the universe and themselves, to the shattered remnants of a grimy human polity, struggling to rebuild itself after an apocalyptic conflict, and beyond that into the truly unknown. Every few pages you're left thinking "Oh, that's pretty cool." In its depth and detail, grandeur and grime, there's a living, breathinng universe resting in the pages in front of you, and it always feels vibrant and real. 

The characters...well, in a way there's no surprises. You'll know the central cast of reprobates from the previous book. I still have every sympathy for Idris, a man brought out of time, both metaphorically and physically. A man crushed by the things that were done by and to him during a past war, now desperately trying to rebuild in peace - or at least, prevent atrocities from happenning again. And his crew of smart mouthed, feisty folk are as diverse, exciting and entertaining as ever. Watching a ships lawyer duel with swords as well as words (and sometimes both at once) will never not be fun. As is seeing a giant scorpion battlebot go on a rampage. But I digress. Idris is people. Sad, sometime slonely, feeling a little broken and displaced, but definitely people - and so are all the other folks around him, whether or not they're, well, human. Tchaikovsky shapes his characters with care, giving us people we can feel for, people we can forgive, people we can understand. Whose pain he draws so artfully you can feel it searing your own soul, and whose joy can leave you turning pages on a grey day with a smile.

Basically, to be a little less lyrical for a second, both our protagonists and their foils anre fully realised people in their own right, not ciphers on a page. They live and breathe and feel real, and as a consequence, we, the reader, feel alongside them. I know I've missed these folks, and I bet you have too. 

The plot - well, I won't spoil it. If nothing else, this is another brick thick story, so I'd probably struggle to spoil it if I wanted to, because there's just so much going on at any given ti,e. But somehow it all hangs together, the tightly woven strands of interweaving story and character drama coming together to make a narrative tapestry that is a thing of beauty. And also a thing that will leave you turning pages late into the night, wanting to know what's going toi happen next. I will say that there's some amazingly depicted space battles, some wonderfully byzantine politics, and a cavacalade of love and joy and sorrow and wrath and defeats and triumphs enough to go around. You're not going to be bored, that's for sure. 

In the end, you're probably here to know if you should reaad this. If you're in the market for a vital, intriguing, fascinating, explosively entertaining space opera, then yes, yes you should.