Tag: anthology

Categories
Review

The Indomitable Ten

Okay you all know by now that I am obsessed with superhero media. It’s, like, my Thing. So when I saw that there was an anthology of superhero1 novellas out? I jumped right on that.
So, as I usually do for anthologies and other collections, I’m going to break it up into a series of short reviews.

My Big, Fat, Accidental Superheroine Wedding

Autocorrect doesn’t approve of ‘superheroine’ but it does approve of ‘superhero.’ Sexist.
Anyhow, this one was a little weird – it was very much focused on a specific subculture, one that I know next to nothing about. In that, it was a bit hard to relate to, but I think that’s okay- like, oh no, however shall I deal with media that doesn’t revolve around me, a white male? So yeah, I’m fine with that part. The actual superhero content of it was a bit odd, though- the main character is basically a deity, after she and her fiancé both wound up in an accident in the Large Hadron Collider that left them able to control their bodies at what appears to be an atomic level. And they’re on the run from the government. Which makes for an interesting story, overall, but I dunno, something about this one just didn’t click for me. Oh well, it was still interesting, and the ending scene was a really good one.

The World, My Enemy

This was a delight to read. It had hints of some of the non-Discworld Terry Pratchett stuff, in the way it looked at the world, and oh man did I love it.2 The main character is an Austrian super-genius, trying to be a super-villain, and… kinda sucking at it. He’s a very millennial type of villain – tons of support from his parents, a lot of potential, and just… not using it at all. And the other characters that make up the setting, from the Nemesis figure to whatever-the-girl-is3 to the cowardly boss- they’re all wonderful, executed delightfully well. It’s a silly little story and I absolutely love it.

Summer of Lob

This is actually the reason I bought this book- I adore Richard Roberts’ Please Don’t Tell My Parents… series of books, and I saw through his twitter that this book featured a novella set in the same universe. And it was everything I wanted – a short, sweet story, following Bull in his younger days. As a bonus, it gave the background for one of the characters I wanted to know more about, and introduced a few more who I’d also like to see more of. Basically, this alone made the book worth buying to me, and the rest was a nice bonus.

Weeper of Blood

I’m assuming this was part of a series, because there’s way too much setting for it to be a standalone short story. To the point that I’m still unclear on some of the stuff – things about the various characters were hinted at well enough that I’ve got an idea, but the world itself is a mystery – is it an alternate timeline, or set in the future, or what? It was really hard to tell, and I’d like to read more to find out.
The story itself was pretty good- a little sad, definitely, but a nice ‘redemption’ arc present as well, so I did like that. I definitely want to see more of this world, get a bit more of the background, though, because I have so many questions.

Seven Seconds

File this one under “have to read more.” Like, I actually just took a break from writing this so I could go google the author and find out if he’s written more.4
There was absolutely everything I want in a superhero story: an interesting main character, and a look at what people with superpowers do if they’re not being superheroes. Plus a superhero team that went insane and became villains, some high tech gadgetry being used, and a wonderful concept of superpowers that give the story its title. Another one in the category of “I would recommend buying this book on the merits of this story alone.”

Friend or Foe

Oh my god I am so confused. I really can’t tell from reading it if this one is part of a series or not- like, the amount of questions I was left with afterwards makes me want it to be, but it was written in such a way that it could believably be a standalone that was supposed to leave the reader with questions. If that was the goal, boy did it ever work. The whole thing basically takes place in the aftermath of a Final Showdown sort of fight, with only allusions to what actually took place there. The way it switched back and forth between two characters was pretty interesting – clearly, one of them was the villain, but not in a very strong way. It was more of a… misunderstood genius, kind of thing, though with a touch of willing sociopathy, so I dunno. It was interesting but a bit aggravating at times.

Night Stalker: A Tale from the Tome of Bill

I wish I could say I liked this one, because the story was kinda interesting, but I didn’t. It felt like it was written by the kind of person who tries to defend the whole “Spider-Woman butt in the air” pose: that’s to say, delighting in that gamer-nerd stereotype, “I live in my parents basement playing WoW all day” sort of humor. The main character spends a while complaining about being “friendzoned.” Blah.

Goon #3

This made me think of Code 8, a cool little short film. They’re the same sort of setting, to the degree that I could pretty reasonably believe one inspired the other. Basically, a world where something like the Superhuman Registration Act of Marvel’s Civil War5 passed, and now the superhuman folks are living with the aftermath. Yeah, there’s some superheroes, and they’re distinctly following a legal process created around that idea: but there’s also regular people who got ground under the wheels of bureaucracy. The main character spent a couple years in prison after “robbery with a deadly weapon.” Which, yeah, a reasonably jail sentence- except for the fact that the robbery was him holding his hand in his pocket so it looked like he was holding a gun. The ‘deadly weapon’ was the fact that he’s got super-strength. The fact that he never mentioned that to the person he was robbing apparently never came up in the trial, or didn’t bother the people sentencing him at all.
Which is a wonderful touch, because there’s people like that in the real world, people who get ground down by the way the system works. And I love that sort of sad realism in superhero content.6

The Incident on Orion

This one was somewhat reminiscent of Invincible, a fun little comic that I read a while back. Basically, it’s the ‘superman’ type hero, except Krypton hasn’t exploded. Instead, Krypton has, as was bound to happen with a society of supermen, become the seat of a sprawling galactic empire.
In this one, as with Invincible, it’s a bit of a vicious one – survival of the fittest was heartily adopted by that empire, and you wind up with people fighting for their right to live in the empire. And once they’ve earned that, they set out to annihilate everyone that stands in the way of that empire, even if ‘standing in the way’ is defined as ‘within 10 light years of somewhere we might want to be one day.’ Basically, gleeful genocide.
There’s a lot of Roman Empire present in this, both in naming and in the way the mythology interacts with the characters. It was really interesting to read, a sort of sad and hopeful tale. I think I’d like to read more.

Sinergy: Immortal Sin

Strange and interesting. The superpowers are a lot lighter a touch here, they still distinctly present. What was more interesting was the backdrop: there’s an Order, it’s apparently been around for a couple thousand years, and it’s somehow affiliated with the catholic church, or christianity as a whole? I’m still a bit unclear. But it was a cool mythology, definitely, and I want to see more of it, because I do love that ‘ancient order’ kind of stuff.
The story itself was… really sad, actually. I think a single character had a ‘happy’ ending, and that was “woke up with no memory of any of this happening, twenty minutes outside of Prague, with nothing but their passport and a plane ticket,” so… not a super happy ending, at that. Still, interesting.

And there we go, that’s the book reviewed. I quite liked it, and would absolutely recommend it. Go read it.

  1. Well, superhero and supervillain. Super-being? ↩
  2. If you ever see “Lost Terry Pratchett novel found; it’s about superheroes” in the news, find a way to tell me gently because I might have an aneurism from how excited I’d be about that. ↩
  3. Certainly not a love interest- somewhere between ‘best friend’ and ‘motivational speaker,’ I suppose? ↩
  4. He has, and I’m going to read it sometime soon, I hope. ↩
  5. The comic book version, not the movie version, which I still haven’t seen, so if you try to tell me spoilers I will have you executed. ↩
  6. It’s so much better than the ‘realism’ of movies these days, where they think that making everything dark and gritty makes it more ‘realistic’ somehow. Y’all have entirely missed the point, Hollywood. ↩
Categories
Review

Future Visions

I picked this little science fiction anthology up when Microsoft emailed me to let me know that it was available for free. I mean, c’mon, who skips out on free stuff?
I know for some things of this sort I’ve done per-short-story review type things, but I’m a bit too lazy to do that.1
The concept for this anthology, so far as I understand it, was basically this: Microsoft invited2 a bunch of big-name science fiction writers to tour one of their research centers. From there, they were free to write whatever short story they wanted to, and so they did. The result was quite interesting – some of them were recognizably influenced by certain forms of research (the Skype team’s work on instant translation was very obvious in a couple of places) while others have very little connection – the final story includes a few small references to the same sort of translation technology, but paints it in a less-than-flattering light.
All told, it was an interesting read, good for reading in bits and pieces when you’ve only got a few minutes to spare, and who can beat that lovely low price of free?

  1. And, to be honest, I do those any time that I haven’t read the entirety of an anthology. This one I read cover-to-cover, with the possible exception of part of the comic that was included, as it crashed my Kindle when I was trying to read it. ↩
  2. Or, presumably, ‘paid.’ ↩
Categories
Review

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 57

Not exactly a book, but still part of my read-everything-on-my-Kindle project. For this one, I’ll only be talking about the various works of fiction that were published in the magazine – I wouldn’t even know how to go about reviewing the bits of nonfiction, interviews and whatnot, that’re included in the magazine.
Since it’s a series of short stories, I’ll break it up into pieces.

And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead

All sorts of bad language included in this one, but a rather enjoyable read. Reminded me of Neuromancer with the cyberpunk aspect of the whole thing, as well as the overall sense of grittiness.

Buffalo

This one didn’t strike me as science fiction. At all. With H.G. Wells present in it, I was hoping for something along the lines of Warehouse 13.1 What I got was something that felt like it should’ve been part of the nonfiction section, filed under ‘depressing.’

Red Planet

Pretty good, and reminded me of the WWW trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer, though from the other side – the WWW books are pervaded by a sense of wonder at what’s possible, and a distinctive dint of the ‘blind people are broken’ ideology that pervades society on some level or another, whereas “Red Planet” focused on the benefits of being blind and why someone might choose to stay that way. Interesting.

Veil of Ignorance

Confusing and a bit hard to follow, but that was done on purpose. Definitely an interesting read, and done in something that reminded me of a space opera way, where the actual sci-fi aspects of things are glossed over entirely, accepted as normal.

Cerile and the Journeyer2

A sad little story, but an enjoyable one. Not a whole lot to say about it.

Things You Can Buy for a Penny

This one was interesting to read just because of the way that it was built in layers – pieces of story hiding behind one another. I quite enjoyed the overall aesthetic of it, a sort of folk tale with a light brush of horror, and definitely that genie-you-got-what-you-wished-for plot twist to each of the little pieces.

In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns

This was the novella included in the magazine, and I loved it. Futuristic murder-mystery aside, the setting for the whole story was a truly wonderful bit of speculative fiction. They took the current global warming crisis and ran with it, expanding biotechnology and the ever-spreading Internet of Things while highlighting the growing cost of traveling long distance and the energy scarcity that we’re creating for ourselves.
For being such a short story, there was certainly a lot of material in this one.
My final opinion is “this novella made the entire magazine worth the purchase.” If there had been nothing else of value in there,3 In the House of Aryaman would’ve made it entirely worth it.

  1. I wasn’t hoping for anything as awesome as Helena Wells, of course, but she’s rather hard to beat. ↩
  2. If you’re following along in the magazine, you’ll have noticed that I just skipped a couple things. You’d be right – I don’t write reviews of things I don’t finish reading, and I wasn’t able to make it through those two bits of fantasy. ↩
  3. And this was not the case, several of them were worthwhile reads, as I’ve mentioned above. ↩
Categories
Review

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

Sometimes I like anthologies, and other times I don’t. My theory is that it depends on whether or not one story catches my attention more than the others – if there’s just the one, I want an entire book of that and the inclusion of the rest just strikes me as a sad second.
This was that other case, where all of them catch my attention almost equally, and I enjoy myself the whole way through.
There were a few short stories that I liked more than the others, but again, nothing that stood out too much.
A Reversal of Fortune was surprisingly hopeful, for the kind of tale it was.
The Night Market was a lot sweeter than I was expecting, and I’d read more of this sort of thing.
I took a bit of issue with The Dog King, but I think that was mostly because it reminded me of Teen Wolf for no good reason.
In Vodka Veritas was a wonderful little story, and I think I’d read a sequel, though I get the feeling the sequel wouldn’t be quite as happy as the work itself. An impressive amount of ‘coming of age’ story crammed into a small amount of space.
The Coat of Stars was my favorite of the anthology, though not easily. It fit nicely in with my knowledge of the fair folk, and the sort of sad-turned-happy story that catches nicely in the mind. I wound up wanting to write, not my own continuation of the story, but my own version of it- a different cast of characters, but a similar situation. It was lovely.
The Land of Heart’s Desire was my second favorite, though by a thin margin. I actually put down the book while I was reading this one and texted my friend1 that he needed to add the anthology to his list of books to read. It was sad and sweet, and it felt like there was a lot of backstory that I’m missing out on, to the point that when I’ve got internet again I’m going to look up Holly Black and see if she’s written more in that world.

And now? On to the next book. I’m working my way through the list, collecting a lot of sun while I read this weekend. I must say, a stack of books and a sunny beach is a great way to wrap up summer vacation- I highly recommend it.

  1. More laborious than it sounds, because as I’m writing this I’ve got cell service in the ‘I had to stand on top of a car to make a phone call’ range. ↩