Jade War - Fonda Lee

First things first: Jade War is a great book. If you’re coming here after reading Jade City, and trying to decide if the next one is up to snuff, I say this to you: Yes. It is really very good. Please go now, to the nearest bookshop, buy a copy, and read it.

Alright, so you’re not immediately convinced? Fair enough. As a sequel, Jade War carries all the things that made its predecessor so great: the complex, driven, vividly characterised cast. The personal politics, between personalities so strong that they throw sparks being in the same room. The fast paced, brutal action, which manages to cut into the reader just as much as the participants. The broader questions about colonialism, nationalism, and the place of a country in a world which is rapidly getting a lot bigger. It’s all there. There’s some kick arse martial arts, and there’s quiet emotional moments which are just as gutting as the knife that just opened someone’s chest.

Everything I loved about Jade City is in here, and it’s been turned up to eleven.

I really love the way that the story interweaves the family dynamic of the No Peak clan, a family dynasty managing a less than entirely legitimate business empire, with the broader politics. A lot of the focus here is on No Peak’s actions, its rivalry with another clan who effectively run the other half of their nascent nation. So we see turf wars in action, and long-held grudges boiling over. But there are also pragmatic power sharing arrangements, as both clans have to deal with third parties trying to impinge on their business during conflict. And there are moments when edged words in a sharply cut suit can turn into a confrontation with a blade. The world of No Peak is a world always on the edge of violence. Stepping back from the brink, yes, absolutely. Prepared to accept partnership[p? Or defeat? Perhaps. But the virtues of a warrior code - of honour, of boundaries to the acceptable – are rubbing up against a modernity which has less use for a warrior aristocracy, and more use for those who can make enormous amounts of money. Kekon, the nation of the clans, is a small place with a crucial resource, sat between far larger powers, trying to avoid being sucked into their feuds. But as a relatively new nation, Kekon is still trying to decide what sort of place it will be. That struggle is played out in the high chambers of the law, and in bodies found floating by the docks at midnight, and in the hearts and minds of all the characters. This is a story of a country looking to become…well, a nation.

But if that’s one of the larger ideas, it floats at the back, in the liminal spaces, in the pauses while characters decide how to react. More directly, we see Anden, one of the central characters from the previous book, packed off to another country in an effort to both hide him away, and give him time to sort himself out. It’s a curiously touching, self-reflective journey that Anden is on, balanced by his slowly growing relationship with a group of Kekon refugees, second or third generation children of those who escaped before Kekon’s independence. There’s some wonderful culture clash here, and some wry commentary on how these expatriates feel like they need to be more Kekon than the Kekonese – and Anden can see the fierce joy they bring to their adopted home, and to their own half-remembered culture, even as he struggles to map their experience to his own.

Which all sounds very complicated and worthy – but it’s beautifully written, the larger issues living in harmony with Anden’s personal journey, and with his desire to help out his friends, and maybe prove that he can be a good person without having to match family expectations.

Which applies to Shae, too. Having been dragged back into family politics in the previous book, Shae is now a woman at the top of her game. She’s ruthless, sure, to her enemies. But also has great love for her family, perhaps matched only by her frustration with them. Shae is a woman filled with passionate intensity, but also with the sort of hard-edged calculation that the modern No Peak needs. Shae’s a leader, there’s no doubt of that. One who thinks fast, and backs up fine words with impressive strategy and sharp blades. Shae’s journey is perhaps one of re-integration, to match Anden’s transition. But Shae isn’t  afraid to say what she things, and to back it up. She also has her own personal struggle, trying to find time and space for personal matters while running the core competencies of a corporation crossed with a crime syndicate. It’s not fragility, as much as a recognition that she’s human, and that family connection isn’t the only thing that people need to get through their day. That said, if Shae’s personal conflicts let her have some vulnerability, it only emphasises the face she puts on outside the walls of family, the face with the knife-edge smile.

Basically, she kicks arse. More please.

Of course there’s Hilo too, the man who now leads the clan. The man who never wanted to do so, the man who has found himself in a cold peace after a hot war. Hilo struggles with his own feelings of inadequacy, I think, and with grief. His is the most traditional role, and in fairness, it’s wonderful to see him in it – both on the streets, with blood on his hands, and in the boardroom, trying to fathom the intricacies of a deal. Hilo is out of his depth, a man taken from the role he was born to play into something else. His efforts to surface from the emotional and political waters slowly rising over his head are an  art of joy and sorrow.

Anyway. They’re backed by an expansive and expanding cast; there are so many minor characters I wanted to see more of. A special shout out to the head of the rival clan, whose machinations are an utter delight to uncover. For the reader, that is, less so for our heroes. In a different series, this hard-edged woman might be the hero. As it is, she’s a razor cut in every page. But they’re all wonderful. Anden’s foster family is by turns welcoming and practical, and the efforts by other clan family members to get involved in affairs are a pure delight in precision plotting and top-notch characterisation.

I won’t give the game away on the plot. It’s too much fun for that, filled with victories, tragedies, and enough reversals that you’re never sure when one is going to turn into the other. There’s more than a little of the (literally) arse-kicking martial arts action you’ve been pining for, and it’s leavened with some richly-lived family drama, a soupcon of geo-politics, and a narrative with a  nuanced, thoughtful approach to the larger themes of family, colonialism, nationalism, global integration, resource management and economic diversity, put through the lens of the personal stories of people we care about.

So, we’re back where we started. It’s a great book. I’ve definitely not done it justice here, so take that one away with you: it’s a great book. If you’ve read Jade City, you need to get on this to see what happens next. If you haven’t, do that first – and then go pick this one up.

Highly recommended.

The Bone Ships - R.J. Barker

The Bone Ships, then. A story of found family, of ships crafted from bones and magic skimming over icy waves. A story of honour and blood. A story of heroism, if not of heroes. Of sacrifices, hard truths, and a song of salt winds and dark waters.

Sorry to wax lyrical, but in more prosaic terms: this is a very, very good book.

As the title suggests, rather a lot of the story takes place on the sea. Specifically, on ships. More specifically, on ships crafted from the bones of dragons. Lets just take a moment to appreciate how cool that idea is. The dragonboats of this world are literally dragon-boats. The ships are crewed by reavers, hard men and women who go out into the world in search of battles and treasure. Well, mostly. The crew of our story are a little different. But I’ll come back to that. For now, it’s enough to imagine a ship crafted from the bones of a dead leviathan crashing through frigid deeps. The society these people come from is driven by scarcity and conflict. It sits in an ocean seemingly at the edge of nothingness – a cold, hard place. Farming is difficult. Keeping children alive, more so. The land is poisoned and poisonous – and as a result, the society that clings to these rocks is led by those with a proven ability to bear living children. And the women with that power, they are no less surgical, no less vicious, no less ruthless than anyone else would be. They keep a court of fertile men, and send the rest out to fight and die and live, however they can – seizing victory and glory on the tides. It’s a fragile world, one underpinned by loss and sacrifice. This is a stark, often brutal world, sure enough – but it’s one where you can feel the wind knife across your face on the spired isles, just as much as feel the blade in your back from the political manoeuvrings of the political elite. It’s a vividly imagined, detailed and entirely believable culture, one you can live and breathe while turning the pages.

Alongside this culture, one which is wrapped in constant war with its neighbours, we have the smaller, more intimate world of a ship and its crew. Here the personalities are important, the Captain, of course, but also those who manage the decks, the navigator, the lookouts, the brawlers. There’s a vitality to a good crew, and a febrile fragility to one that isn’t holding together. In both cases, the emotional tenor is here, and it comes out of the page in dialogue, in sarcastic asides, in banter, in orders given and obeyed (or not). The power dynamics of the enclosed space are implicit and complex, and here, in this story, you can live and breathe those dynamics, and see them play out. If the wider society is twisted upon itself, dependent on the ships and reliant on conflict – the ships themselves are something else. Even the worst are, if not families, the worst because they don’t have the bonds accepted by the best.

Really what I’m saying is, this is a really well-drawn, sharply observed world. It may not always be a very pleasant one, but you’ll find yourself lost in its intricacies, nonetheless.

Onto this stage step the crew of the Tide Child. When we first meet our interlocutor, Joron, he’s the captain of the ship. Of course, he’s also constantly drunk, scared of his own crew, and determined to drink himself to death on a beach before ever getting back on the ship. And the crew are disparate, cruel, lost. It doesn’t help, of course, that they’re on a so called “black ship”, all sentenced to death, with service taken as an alternative to execution. They are not, it must be said, a happy bunch. As the narrative moves, Joron’s relationship with the crew evolves, as does the man himself. As our eyes on this world, Joron is reflective, thoughtful, aware of his own fragilities and weaknesses – perhaps too much so. But that fragility also gives him a much needed humanity, when matched with the other central force of the story, Lucky Meas.

In another version of this story, Meas is the centre of attention. She’s smart, funny, lethal. She inspires courage, she inspires friendship she inspires her crews as heroes. A disgraced leader of fleets, a woman who would happily kick down the door to perdition if her goals lay beyond it. And don’t get me wrong, watching her stride across the page, taking absolutely no crap, is an absolute delight. But living it via Joron gives us a perspective, a detachment, a more grounded understanding. Meas is a force of nature, that’s true. But if she understands herself and her purposes, Joron does not – at least, not entirely. This helps maintain the narrative mystery, and also helps in keeping Meas human; Joron is not always entirely happy with the appearance of such a force of nature into his life, and his opinions help shape the way we see things.

The two of them, the phlegmatic Joron and the fiery Meas, will take the broken crew of the Tide Child into the path of matters of great portent. I won’t spoil those, but will say this – they do have a tendency to get bloody. But there are also startling moments of grace scattered through the pages, where a well-turned word or an indrawn breath can pierce the heart of the reader as sharply as any blade. Suffice to say that somewhere between the two lies our story, and it had be turning pages in that state where I desperately wanted to know what happened next, but also didn’t want the book to end. It’s a tale of found family, and of sacrifices and of challenges, and of friendship, blood and death. A story of trying to change the world, and a story about people, and what happens when they try to change the world.

It’s compulsive, compelling reading. I’m absolutely desperate to see more of the Tide Child, and I think once you’ve finished this book, you will be too. Go out and pick this one up right away.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a sci-fi novella from Becky Chambers, whose Wanderers sequence met widespread acclaim. This novella, though, is something new. And, not to give the game away, it’s rather good. It has a lot of the elements I’ve come to associate with Chambers’ writing: complicated characters with both believable issues and an undeniable warmth. A detailed, vividly imagined world. A story that wants to explore things, to look at both what’s in the universe, and what place humanity has within it.  All of that and more help to make this novella a singular experience.

Part of that is the places the story wants to take us. In a not-overly distant future, humanity has reached out for the stars. Their instruments, volunteer search teams willing to go into cold storage, to go to the ends of space, through time, to see things that have never been seen before, and to report it all back to a world that is now nothing but a distant memory.  And what stars they’ll see. Each is something unique, and the thrill of discovery for our interlocutors is one that seeps viscerally off the page and into your bones. Each new biome is an adventure, a discovery, something truly new. That isn’t to say it’s always nice, that each instant is one of rare beauty – but each moment is definitely singular. And these worlds – well, the prose is lively, the descriptions sparkling and imaginative. Each of these worlds is somewhere entirely new, and that feeling never fades. I did appreciate that these worlds, their mystery and possibility,  are shown to us in parallel with thoughts on our own Earth, whose news remains as interminably unpleasant as ever – and for whom, as ever, hope is never entirely lost. The people exploring the edges of our known space are human enough to want to go home, and human enough to want to keep on going into the dark.

Speaking of which; the text centres around one survey team, as they move from planet to planet, dipping into and out of time like cranes on a lake. In between the descriptions of new worlds, and the surprisingly compelling scientific rigour it takes to explore them, we sit beside these people, and see them at their worst, as well as their best. They are people though. In between their professionalism are under(and over) currents of friendship, the sort of banter that evolves between four people who’ve worked together in close quarters for a long time. There’s wit and sass by the barrel-load, and I found myself chuckling more than once at a particularly clever remark. But these aren’t ciphers either 

They’re emotionally present, and if not always entirely honest with themselves about their baggage, at least trying to be. There’s a warmth and strength in the group dynamic, in a small team with a shared purpose trying to do a good job, and also be healthy, and be there for each other. There’s a transhuman element as well, exploring the changes these people have had to make in order to explore strange new worlds; but that sits alongside the human element, and accentuates it. No matter what these people look like, or sound like, or how they feel, or who they feel it for, they’re always people. 

That’s a positive message coming out of the text, and one that’s interwoven cleverly through each line of the text. These are people; in their diversity, they find strength, and humanity – and that strength, that humanity, helps keep these people feeling like people as we share their troubles and triumphs across the universe.

I won’t go into the plot, past the exploration of worlds that I’ve already alluded to. But the story is there, between the interactions of the characters, and the new places they set out to discover. It’s in each line of dialogue, each new variety of fauna. There’s stories here about people and acceptance and difficulty and crisis, and each of them feels real. There’s ethical problems and small worries and world-changing choices. There’s some dark moments and choices that have to be faced, and there’s the sort of optimism and hope that makes you want to build In short: it' a space programme all of your own for these people. It’s not a story that relies n explosions and one-liners to get your attention, but it’s a story that will keep your attention by being honest, and by  having interesting things to say. In short, it’s a damn good read.

Should you read it? I think so. It’s saying interesting things, asking interesting questions, and doing so with characters I quickly came to care about, in a world that feels very real.

The Last Astronaut - David Wellington

The Last Astronaut is a lot of things. Let’s start form the top. It’s a near future sci-fi novel, in a world where, after a Mars mission ends in Challenger-esque tragedy, NASA has ceased human space exploration. Decades later, however, the commander of that doomed mission has been pressed into service, to investigate an alien object falling into our solar system. Things, as you may expect, do not go entirely to plan.

Though this is an ensemble story, I want to say up front that the standout for me was Sally Jansen, the commander whose catastrophic mission to Mars ended government-funded human spaceflight decades before the story takes place. The Jansen we have before us is someone struggling with themselves. With their own guilt, of course. But also with failure, with having come close to living a dream, of embodying her own goals, and then seeing those taken away. Not only that, but seeing that failure cascade, and strip away not only her dream of going to Mars, but everyone else’s. Jansen is outwardly still a woman at the top of her game, even if the game is over. A leader, who can make hard decisions, think fast and act fast when she has to. And all of that is true. She absolutely kicks arse, and it is a sight to see. The story isn’t afraid to let her off the leash, to let her show her expertise, to let her drive her own story.

But she’s also walking on thin ice. There are cracks in the façade that we can see in her narration. The need to save others. To take the weight of the shame and guilt for those she couldn’t save. The wish for redemption. And its to the text’s credit that we can root for Jansen, even as we recognise that the pressures that have shaped her may have been catastrophic; that she is, internally, treading on thin ice. To her credit though, Jansen is smart, resilient, and willing to pick herself up off the mat – both physically and mentally. The mixture here is just right – giving us a protagonist we can believe was a hero, with more than enough of the flaws that make us human.

Jansen is aided, of course, by a delightful ensemble cast, including her new crew, some of who have secrets of their own.. There’s the secretive military man, of course, but there’s also an effervescent scientist, whose discovery of the object, and dream of going into space has catapulted him into the big leagues. And the naïve researcher into xeno-bilogy with an intellect so razor sharp she might just cut herself on it. They’re an odd crew, and they definitely have their quirks, their mysteries, their moments of difficulty. But along with the ground control team, they’re our emissaries to whatever is heading toward us.

Of course, that relies on them being able to get there first.

The text has an interesting narrative style; parts are written from the viewpoints of the characters in the moment, and the visceral immediacy of those sections hit like a freight train. Smaller sections are apparently produced ex post facto, written or recorded as an after action report for an event which looks set to change humanity forever.  The contrast in tone, the implacable dry bureaucracy of the reports, blended with the intimate horrors of the larger chapters, not only kept my attention, but left me wondering what happened next – looking for the reality under the formality of the reports and recordings, looking for the indescribable in the layers beneath the  formal reality.

This works really well for the earlier portions of the text, as both we and our characters are brought up to speed. Trying to guess what happened before it does, trying to understand what the after action reports, the video transcripts, the scattered future artefacts are telling us.We, and the characters, are caught up in the challenge, in the desire and dream of space, of seeing what’s out there. Of touching down on something truly alien. Of understanding, perhaps, that we’re not alone, and what that means. It’s energetic and optimistic and an absolute pleasure to read, as everyone works together to see what they can find outside the surly bonds of earth.

I won’t spoil anything here, but I’ll say this. The world drawn here is top-notch. The sections in corporate America, and the government facilities of Nasa, will send a tremor of familiarity through anyone who’s ever been to either .The clinical construction of a mission, mixed with the spirit of adventure and attitude that makes it work. You can see the people striding forward, torch in hand, and you can see the world around them – ours. Once they reach the object, things change. Again, no spoilers. But here the strange, the unusual is what stands out, alongside the familiar. It shocks at the same time that it seems tantalisingly within our grasp. The atmosphere is electric, and the object is tantalisingly alien. Jansen and her team are somewhere strange, where the rules don’t apply – less a frontier than a different frame of reference. 

In sum, I’m saying this: the characters are very human, and the object is absolutely, vividly not. What happens when the two meet, is something else entirely.

This is a book about discovery. About heroism in dark, dark places. About doing what you have to, in order to survive, about courage, and about duty. It’s about loss, as well, and love, and the things that make us the same and different. The intimate horrors that we share with each other, and the triumphs that get us through the day. It’s a very human story, and one that, once it has you in its grip, isn’t going to let you go until it’s done.

If you’re looking for some hard sci-fi, blended with the best of humanity as well as downright, primeval horror, then this is the book for you.

The Unbound Empire - Melissa Caruso

The Unbound Empire is the third in Melissa Caruso’s Swords and Fire series. The saga up to now has included more than a few swords, and a fairly hefty amount of fire, both deployed to maximum effect in making me turn pages to find out what happens next. This conclusive chapter not only continues that tradition, but ramps it up to eleven. There’s plots and politics aplenty, as well as more than a little blood, all wrapped around some well-crafted characters, whose relationships, for good or ill, are at the scintillating heart of the story.

At the sharp end, this is a book about empires, about magic, and about the people who will wield either to make change happen. The Serene Empire is the central geography. A sprawling entity, it has both client states and a rather hungry next door neighbour. The Empire carries traces of the Italian renaissance about it – its head of state is a Doge, whose rule is advised by a council of nine landholders. The Empire is rich, and largely happy. Its citizens seem to toil away at trade and religion and martial activities, without too much in the way of feudal oppression. There’s definitely some problems here, but they are, by and large, the good guys.

One of the problems is how they feel about magic. Because this is a world where magic is something brought about by birth. Something any child could have. Some of the things one can do with magic – crafting defensive wards, or elaborate items – are relatively harmless. Other things some mages could do – such as setting large numbers of people on fire – are less so.

This has left the state to step in, to hoard those with magic, and to seek to control the. Each is tied to another, non-magical person, who decides if and when the mage’s powers are released, or shut down. This isn’t a perfect solution, but I’d say it makes sense in the world of the Empire. It’s also a great way for the book to explore inequality, and sacrifice. While some of the mages in the story feel they’ve lost their freedom,, others are accepting of the luxury they live in – constrained, but away from the streets. Others struggle with it, but recognise that they don’t have a better way t control small children with the ability to incinerate anyone who looks at them funny.

Ther’s a lot of politics here, as our protagonist, herself bound to a mage, struggles to give them more in the way of rights. It’s a thoughtful, nuanced discussion of the power of the individual and the power of the state, and what responsibility each has to the other, and to their fellow citizens.  But it’s also a lavish backdrop for some thoroughly byzantine politics, as factions of the Empire all try to set its direction. To be fair, they’re all fairly united against a common enemy; but efforts to shape the Empire are often rather cutthroat from poisonings through political chicanery and, theoretically, up to extra-judicial assassinations. It’s a weltering whirligig of factions, and at the same time, a sprawling, thriving, heart-poundingly  alive place.

The same may not be said of its nearest neighbour, a federated autocracy run by mages. Those at the top of the heap are obscenely powerful mages. Those without magic also lack any power. Those at the top of the tree are only loosely confederated, each holding to their own slice of the pie, and always eyeing the others for a chance to seize more territory. But now they’re also looking for an excuse to get involved in the Empire, as a nice change of pace from trying to kill each other. Their demesnes feel more rural, closer to nature than the humming urbanity of the Empire, That said, the trickling streams and verdant forests are in stark contrast to the horrors of those Witch Lords who rule them, typically blending magical puissance with long-held grudges and little in the way of morality.

These are the two powers on the stage, and though they feel very different, they both feel equally alive, equally real.

The central duo for this book are the same as in those preceding: Amalia Cornaro is the noble heir to her family, linked to one of the Empire’s only fire warlocks in a magical accident, and, I think it’s fair to say, a woman who has been having a bit of a tough year so far. She’s linked to Zaira, a smart-mouthed woman from the bottom of society, whose main talent (aside from creating some great insults), is being able to generate vast amounts of fire on command – essentially making her a one-woman-army.

Full disclosure, I think they’re both great.

Amalia is a woman who has, to put it mildly, had a tough time recently. But as the text progresses, it’s possible to see the steel she has at her core, willing to pick up and run with tough decisions. Even if they’ll feel like they break her. Perhaps doubly so, then. But alongside that steel sits enough humanity to worry about what power and responsibility could turn her into; to observe the ruthless measures of the circles she’s moving into, and decide where she’ll draw the line, decide who she’ll want to be. That’s helped by the skein of compassion wrapped around the aforementioned steel core. Amalia isn’t a bad person, doesn’t want to be one, and is still willing to bear the costs that she knows are the price of action. But she feels for people. Maybe she doesn’t always understand them, maybe she’d rather be in a  book than at a party charming political opponents, but she wants the best for her Empire, for her friends, and even for herself. It’s easy to sympathise with a woman who feels out of her depth, and to cheer her on as she rises to the challenges = be they maniacal witch-lords, or her own romantic entanglements.

In her aims, she’s largely assisted by Zaira, who seems never to have met a person she actually liked. The fire warlock is working hard not to show too publically her thoughts on whether she wants to be a weapon for the Empire. She’s still hurt, still struggling to come to terms with herself, and watching her iron pragmatism clash with Amalia’s ideals is an outright joy. It helps that she is, honestly, really rather funny. There’s a person here, a conflicted, struggling person, who is willing to pitch in with Amalia to make things better, but isn’t doing so with any illusion of it all ending well.  Zaira brings a different energy, a different voice to the pairing – more jaded, but perhaps, behind the shell, more vulnerable.

Watching both women grow over the past two books has been fantastic, and I can safely say that the apotheosis of their relationship here carries all the emotional weight it deserves.

They’re surrounded by a wonderful gaggle of other characters, including the rather delightful Marcello, the straightforward Captain who helps guard the Empire’s mages from harm, and whose affection for Amalia is obvious, heartfelt and straightforward. Marcello gets some more time on the page in this book, and watching him change, seeing where his priorities lie, is by turns wonderful and painful. In part, that’s because social standing leaves his affection for Amalia in a bit of a troubled state; she’s also courting one of the Witch Lords, Kathe,  in what both know to be a political alliance. But the man Amalia is working with by necessity is also enigmatic, powerful, handsome, intriguing, and yes, witty. Of course he’s also dangerous, and probably has a hidden agenda. But the chemistry between Kathe and Amalia is undeniable – the page crackles with energy while tey’re together, and the attraction is at least as genuine as the danger. Negotiating this rather awkward triangle is one of the ways Amalia is trying to shape herself – to decide where what she wants and needs is taken up in what her country wants and needs. It’s powerfully written, compelling work.

And of course, there’s the villain. Ruven. Oh, hats off to the author on this one. Ruven is deeply, deeply creepy. A powerful witch-lord, he can change the skin of those he’s in contact with. That can involve magically healing their wounds, or paralysing with a touch, or making someone explode from the inside out. Ruven is…not a very nice person. That he thinks of everyone without magic as less than a person isn’t a great surprise, perhaps. But he also carries an affection, of sorts, for Amalia, seeing her intelligence, and a chance to drive his goals forward. Of course, he’s also a monster, with a penchant for atrocities. Ruven slithers insidiously on and off the page, and has a certain audacious charisma that makes his every appearance into compulsive reading – if only to see what horror he’ll unleash next, and which scheme will bear terrible fruit.

There are more, of course – an entirely delightful ensemble of new and old friends. And each steps up to the reader to introduce themselves, and even if we only see the for a few moments, they are seen, they are real. They may not be nice; there’s more than a fair share of tyrants and ruthless politicians here, between the blades and the fire. But they are people, and even if their goals are appalling, we can understand them. These are characters with heart and soul, whose presence gives the story a depth and heft, the weight that makes it something true.

I won’t, having gone on this long, go into the details of the story. It is, after all, the finale of a series. I wouldn’t want to spoil it. But if you’re here, you’re probably wondering how many of your questions will be answered. You may be wondering whether the end of the series can hold up to the high bar set by the previous books. You may be wondering if the story will still pick you up and make you soar, whilst wringing out all the emotions it can manage.

My answer is this: Yes, to all those things. This is a fantastic conclusion, a high-water mark in a series which was already really very good. It has interesting things to say about freedom, about oppression, about sacrifice and power. But it does those things with a verve that keeps the pages turning, by giving us characters we care about (one way or the other!), by making their struggles feel real, making their conflicts, emotional and otherwise, have real cost and real triumphs.

So, if you’re here wondering if you want to know how the story ends, I’m here to tell you that yes, you do.

Limited Wish - Mark Lawrence

Limited Wish is the second in Mark Lawrence’s Impossible Times series. It’s a book that’s equal parts time travel physics, teenage romance, Dungeons and Dragons, and snappy, fast-paced action.

I say equal parts. At the heart of it, this is the story of Nick Hayes. When we last ran into Nick, he was escaping from a psychotic killer, and saving his own reality by (maybe) following the instructions of his future self. Nick is, it must be said, used to some weird stuff. Between the time-travel shenanigans and his own terminal cancer (now in remission), Nick’s been having a fairly hard time. Mind you, he’s also been having adventures nobody else would believe.

As we come into the new book, we find Nick at university.  Always a mathematical prodigy, he’s managed to finagle his way into a relationship with a professor researching the mechanics of time. This is, as one might expect, fraught with difficulties. The funding for this research comes from obscure and obfuscated sources, with a face which isn’t averse to turning up at the lab and asking for a demonstration, or even a change of direction. The shadowy nature fo the funding adds a certain spice to the proceedings. While Nick is working his own angles, trying to work out how to shape a future which he may already have seen glimpses of, there are other forces shifting at the boundaries of his understanding. Still, the central issues which face him feel central to the narrative, and each is delivered with a raw energy which will tear the reader inside-out.

This is good stuff. Nick feels real, sure enough. His struggles feel genuine, and his own lack of confidence that things will work out help keep the tension bound within the story. Seeing events unfurl through Nick’s eyes means we see the metaphorical device tick down, unable to think of a way to contain or stop it – and we stand alongside the narrator whilst they struggle so hard to do so. Nick’s insecurities, failures, difficulties, honesty and decent-ness are all familiar; that’s in no doubt. But in their immediacy, in the closeness of their feeling, and in the raw veracity of their energy, those feelings make Nick real. He’s a living, breathing person bound between pages, an awkward adolescent under seismic pressure, trying to do the right thing while trying to understand what the right thing even is. But as part of that struggle, we have to recognise Nick’s fierce intelligence between the pages, and his own furious vulnerability and mortality. This is not someone who wants to die, and they’re willing to bend the universe to prevent it.

Happily, a lot of what stands true for the previous book is also the case here. The world is, for those of us that existed in it, instantly familiar. The scent of cigarette smoke in pubs, the slang, the less modern approach to sexuality – they all carry the fevered scent of the era. If you managed to skip it on your own, this may seem like a fever dream; if not, it’s likely to feel as familiar as a second skin. To Nick, this is modernity, to us history. But it lives and breathes for us as much as for him, a world that knows our memories and won’t let go. I guess what I’m saying is, if you weren’t there, you may feel like you were, and laugh at the oddity of it; if you were there, you may well feel the same. It’s a well-drawn memory of the period, and one which evokes the memory enough to feel real without also revelling in nostalgia. There’s old songs, sure, there’s familiar neighbourhoods; but there’s the old prejudices too, and old blood on people’s hands.

Still, Nick and his gang are a constant delight. They’re personable,  and crackling with the sort of energy that defines long-tie friends. They’re willing to walk the line for each other, to take risks – and also to murder Orcs and delve dungeons for each other. The D&D gives a certain geek cachet, but it also helps to shape the mood of the text, of a set of friends fighting against an unutterable evil and triumphing alongside, or in spite of each other. The parallels are there, but the mechanics also serve to ground the story I friendship, in personal relationships, in the emotional, human core, rather than in the snappy happenings of other sections.

Speaking of which. If everything is a compelling blend of the strange and the familiar. If the world is one which stalks the edges of nostalgia, then twists with a jagged edge. If the characters seem like old friends, but with difficult choices in front of them, then the same can be said of the plot. No spoilers, of course, but it’s talking about our relationship with time, on the one hand, and about what we’re willing to sacrifice for our goals, on the other. There’s a sense of free will and destiny, yes, but also of people trying to shape their own truths in a world determined to shape them. This is a story about people who are willing to fight back, to take the weight, to do the right thing. It’s also a story about illness, about family, about one boy’s struggle to become the person he wants to be – oh, and about a romance, perhaps. About what two people will be vulnerable enough to let themselves feel.

Is it a good book? Yes. This is whip-smart science fiction. It unapologetically asks big questions, and lets the characters and the reader work out the answers. It’s also honest, bringing a depth of understanding and emotion to all of its characters, giving them the depth they need to feel real.  The story is gripping, fast-paced and believable, with a drumbeat of tension which won’t let you put it down until you’re done.

In short, this is a cracking sequel, and a great story in its own right. Give it a try.

This Is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

This Is How You Lose The Time War is a lot of things. But if you’re just here for the topline, the first of those things is that it’s really, really good. It’s an artful blend of hard-science fiction, high-concept ideas, and emotionally fraught, honest, affecting characterisation, laced through with a complex, believable, thoughtful romance seasoning. And all of this is wrapped up in an epistolary format, as a pair of agents on different sides of a struggle that threatens to tear apart causality start leaving each other notes.

Those writing the letters are referred to only as Red and Blue. They feel almost like concepts more than names. One lives in the boundaries of a timestream dominated by technology; there are sweeping dataspheres, constant communications, constant monitoring, soaring data edifices, that sort of thing. The other comes from a timeline which feels more organic, where the organic is at the heart of philosophy and civilisation.  Both parties are utterly immersed in their conflicting realities, and in their conflict up and down the twisting ladder of time. The prose is fluid and lyrical where it needs to be, and intentionally not when it shouldn’t be – as Red and Blue try the hardest thing, to actually speak to each other. That mastery of language makes this book such a pleasure to read, it’s untrue.  

It’s helped by the fact that both central characters are so very likable. That said, travelling up and down the time-stream as they do, disrupting each other’s work by, say, arranging for Lincoln not to be assassinated, or for Caesar to die a little later than we think of as correct,  has given them both a rather distinct perspective. It bleeds from the letters they send each other, the sense of the long view, of waiting for the right moment to do the right thing, and watching the results cascade outward in a multiplicity of changes. Each of their exchanges is an exercise in elegance, and the reader sits on either side of this burgeoning relationship, which mixes up that temporal vision with a more immediate, though no less strange, sense of desire.

I’d be hard put not to call this a love story. But the growth of affection between Red and Blue is a gradual thing at the same time that it’s a white-hot furnace. It’s a sense of slowly growing trust, and a willingness from each to protect the other, to try and live up to each other. They’re a strange pair, but the spaces between the words, the hidden truths they don’t dare write down, are an inferno in the minds eye. These are people. Strange, wonderful people, with a passionate intensity that is no longer restricted to the worst. Because they’re such fun to read. The letters between Red and Blue are full of wry observance, of a closeness, an affection which resonates throughout, and feels like the backbone of the text.

The worlds they explore are wonders in their own right. Though we only see snapshots, still there are flashes of the familiar and the strange, to keep us on our toes. And each is vividly, lavishly described, each jump to a new period carries the same depth and heart as the one which came before. The future, or futures, our future (or futures) are there as well, of course. And they are both as wonderful and terrible as one might expect. To read of the dance of Blue and Red is to be swept up in it, to feel their hungers and their fears, to live their careful steps between realities, to understand the craving and the energy which drives them back and forth through time, and away from and toward each other.

This is a novella that is, as you can probably tell, rather difficult to describe. What the authors, fictional and otherwise, have wrought here is an intricate tapestry, or a sparkling jewel of a narrative. Its complicated, passionate, compelling work. It’s a thoughtful, powerful work, which has interesting things to say, and interesting questions to ask – and it does so while telling a fantastic story.  You should read this. If it does nothing else, it will make you feel.