Review: The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories

The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories by Joan Aiken
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received an e-galley copy of this book through Edelweiss.

This was one of several collections of 'strange stories' - magical, weird, unsettling collections that don't pack neatly into a genre label - that I read this year. Many of them, including this one, are almost like fairy tales, and I'd describe Aiken's as more like the original Grimm's fairy tales, pretty horror stories, than anything else.

Many of the stories focus on children experiencing the fantastic in their dire situations. Sometimes they read like miniature animatronic dollhouses featuring strange and magical scenes. Often nature encroaches on old, Victorian English homes. This is one of the most beautiful collections I read, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone, whether you like fantasy, horror, or typical literary writing.

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Review: Ninefox Gambit

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book through NetGalley.

Ninefox Gambit is certainly one of the most original and daring books I've read in a while. The premise of the story - a galactic empire that uses a kind of magic based on math and patterns - is fascinating. The core relationship between Kel and Jedao provides a solid emotional trajectory. Overall, though, I left the book feeling vaguely disappointed, both because the the premise didn't pull off as well as I'd hoped and because the character-driven story was a bit predictable.

The way the magic works is essentially confluence based on patterns of movement of either ships or soldiers that produce larger effects - like explosions, or camouflage. The scope extends beyond the military and throughout their society, as everyone in the Hexarchate follows the same calendrical patterns/schedules. It's a thoughtful metaphor for traditionalist societies where every person has their place and best serves the universe by performing their role dutifully. The main problems for me were that the patterns/formations that are used to create magical effects are abstract enough that they were usually weren't visualizable, and because the effects are magical and arbitrary, it was hard to build tension; the reader can't possible know that X formation will lead to Y effect, so when all the soldiers are getting into formation X, we don't know what that means for the next scene.

The story is driven by this magic. A rogue faction is enforcing a different calendar, and it's disrupting the very carefully woven fabric of magic that pervades the galaxy. Kel is chosen to fight this rogue faction for two reasons: first, she is a soldier who is unusually good at math; second, she suggests resurrecting the person of Jedao, a commander who went insane and killed his own troops many decades earlier. Resurrecting Jedao means incorporating him into her own mind and body, for reasons that are still unclear to me.

While the larger story of the Hexarchate is the 'pitch' story, the one that shapes the book, the core of the story is the relationship between Kel and Jedao. Kel starts remembering things that Jedao has done as if she had done them herself, and while she sees his many atrocities, she also starts to learn that the history she has been taught isn't quite right. As I mentioned above, this part of the story feels almost too familiar - an upstanding citizen must pair up with a supposedly evil traitor to defeat a common enemy, and along the way they begin to understand each other, and it's revealed that the bad guy had some good motivations all along.

It's been a while since I read the book now and I honestly can't quite remember the ending, but I would certainly read a sequel. It was a pretty enjoyable read and the most difficult part for me was that there are very few physical descriptions of anything, and it felt like I was blind while reading.

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Review: Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening

Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marjorie M. Liu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book (as separate issues) from NetGalley.

Monstress is my favorite currently-running comic. Hands down. The artwork is gorgeously lush and elegantly stylized. The story features kickass action sequences *and* quiet character moments. The pacing is perfect - you get exactly enough information early on to pique your interest and it keeps giving you bits and pieces of backstory at just the right pace to keep you eagerly waiting for more.

I can't wait for this series to be over. Is that weird? It's probably weird - usually you want your favorite series to last forever. But I want to skip to the end because this series has the deep, intricate mythology of a 500-page fantasy novel and I suspect it will best be served as one indulgently delicious dish. And once it's over, I'm pretty sure this will go down as one of the classics of comic canon.

The story has a steampunk vibe and follows a young girl, Maika, who harbors the spirit of a violent being. She, like many in her world, is half human and half *something else.* Her people are being "studied" (read: experimented on) by a group of magical human women, women who control human politics. We see Maika grapple with the monster inside her while she becomes more involved in the war between her people and the human scientist-witches. The book balances her personal journey - vengeance against those who killed her mother and learning to control herself - with the larger story that mixes science, magic, and gods. Think Bioshock meets anime tropes. There are also talking cats.

I can't do this its proper justice. Please, please go read Monstress. It's fantastic.

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Review: The Winged Histories

The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received an e-galley copy of this book from Edelweiss and Small Beer Press.

I went into "The Winged Histories" without reading its companion novel, "A Stranger in Olondria." Sofia Samatar's first book came out three-ish years ago, and I'd heard of it in passing but never picked it up. I love Small Beer Press, though, so between that and the positive buzz I jumped at the chance to review this.

Now, "The Winged Histories" is explicitly not a sequel, but for a large chunk of this book I felt like I was missing something. Much of this review is going to detail what my expectations were based on the back-of-book blurb and my experience at points in the book, and how they didn't quite match up to what the book actually was. As the blurb states, it is the stories of four women - a soldier, a poet, a priestess, and a socialite - and their involvement in a war.

The soldier, Tav, gets the first story, and we're thrown into her life as a warrior right away. This was my first stumbling block: it's difficult to tell what the timeline is in this first story, at least in the beginning. Tav is disoriented and remembering events, and she alternates between short, sequential anecdotes and summary recollections with few cues for the reader. Part of my confusion might have been due to my disjointed reading, and I strongly feel a re-read would solve all of my problems (but not starting the book with this particular sequence might have prevented them, too). Once things settled down and became linear, I had an easier time with it.

The second revelation that helped me cope with the story came from another reviewer as I was skimming reviews, about halfway through. They suggested reading this as if it were four short stories, not one narrative, and that immediately made the story 100% better for me. I thought the book was going to be a slow burn that would encompass Tav's emotional trauma and recovery, paralleling the nation of Kestenya's trauma and recovery during and after the war, mostly focusing on Tav but with the other three women woven into her narrative. And even halfway through, toward the end of the priestess's chapter, I was still expecting the rest of Tav's story. That's not exactly what I got, but from this point on, I was able to adjust my expectations and thoroughly enjoy the book with no qualifications.

So, aside from the confusion, I loved this book. All the characters were beautifully written, compelling, tragic, human. The story is, generally, about a war for Kestenya's independence, led by Tav and her cousin, Dasya. The drama of the story is based largely in the elaborate culture that Samatar has created. Inheritance goes to nephews before sons and nieces before daughters. Dasya is the son of the Telkan, and heir to the throne because he has no male cousins - only Tav and her sister, Siski. Legends of Drevedi - winged vampires who supposedly share a lineage with humans - are the fantastical element lurking in the background, waiting to step forward. The Drevedi are maligned, supposedly extinct, but intertwined with the traditional religion - which has now been outlawed in favor of the Cult of the Stone. The Stone in question is covered in fragments of writings in many different languages, and supposedly fell from the sky to the middle of a desert. All in all, the worldbuilding here is fantastic, rich, and decadently layered - and remarkably fresh and original.

The characters Samatar chose to follow - Tav, Siski, Tav's lover, and the isolated daughter of the high priest of the Cult of the Stone - are all of varying importance in the war for Kestenya's independence and its fallout, ranging from Tav, who leads the charge, to her lover, who comforts her and who doesn't shy away from reminding her of the cost of such a war to the women like her who are left behind. Tav's story, appropriately, is more narrative, but troubled by the trauma of war. Her lover's story is absolute poetry. Siski, the socialite, tells a story of romance and loss of innocence. And the priestess reveals the secrets of the Priest of the Stone, who claims to know secrets of the gods but knows nothing about people. Together they form a portrait of a country that strives for unity and independence but is itself a messy, heterogeneous collection of peoples and beliefs. This is a story about history, and how what 'history' is depends on the perspectives that construct it.

This book also shines in its prose. This is the most elegantly, painfully written fantasy book I've read in years. Samatar's language is subtle but impactful and haunting. She writes poetry, outside of her novels, and it's clear and apparent on every page. She knows the power of a word in the right place and when to hold back, to wait or omit entirely. The result is a treasure where every page is steeped in beauty and emotion.

Overall, this was definitely a challenge, but one that was absolutely worth the effort and perhaps worth more because of it. The characters, the prose, the world-buidling are rich and beautiful and I am itching to pick up "A Stranger in Olondria" as soon as I possibly can. Read this book, even if you're not a fantasy fan, because this is a beautiful book first and a fantasy book second.

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Review: Planetes Omnibus, Volume 1

Planetes Omnibus, Volume 1 by Makoto Yukimura
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book from Edelweiss.

I'd heard about "Planetes" when I received my e-galley copy, but I hadn't heard much. I had no idea what this book was about, no expectations, and I was honestly pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed everything about it. From the opening scenes the characters, the world, and the style pulled me in. All of the SF anime and manga I've consumed has either been near-future, Earth-based, and often dystopian or cyberpunk (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Akira), or set in the far future when humanity is already living comfortably in space (Knights of Sidonia) - but above all, thematically concerned with human and other, instantiated as humans and the super-human (either superpowered humans or something more alien and more powerful). "Planetes" is unique (to me) in that it's a near-ish future concerned with expansion into space and humans living their lives. There are no giant aliens, no cyborgs, no superhumans, just humanity.

This focus on human life is clear from the opening scenes: a man and his wife are flying in a low-orbit ship across the planet. The wife is nervous, as she always is. The husband moves to the back of the ship to get some coffee, and the entire front end of the ship is destroyed. A few years later, he is part of the three-person crew that are the core characters of the story. Their ship is a garbage collector; they spend their days literally cleaning up after humanity, collecting space debris. This is an important job, though, because the thoughtless, random detritus of human expansion can be deadly, from the largest chunk of space station to the smallest screw. There's Yuri, who is looking for his late wife's compass, Hachimaki, who wants nothing more than to be chosen for the longest space trip ever, a trip to Jupiter, and Fee, who wants nothing more than a good place for a smoke.

Most of the story arcs can stand alone, and many are slice-of-life pieces, but together they build a story that spans several years and chronicles the lives of a crew that grow together and come to depend on each other. I love the character dynamics, especially as the series continues and minor characters blossom. I also very much enjoy the world Yukimura has built (as a side note, I'm impressed that he's both the writer and illustrator for the whole thing). It's a world with moving parts and importance, and a message that comes through pervasively but not overwhelmingly. The art was a slow burn. I didn't love it at first, because I do have a strong preference for color over black and white, but there are some absolutely gorgeous scenes where the blackness of space feels as vast and drowning as it is in reality.

Overall, strongly recommend this collection, and I'll be on the lookout for the second one soon!

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Review: Rat Queens - Deluxe - Volume One

Rat Queens - Deluxe - Volume One by Kurtis J. Wiebe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book from Image Comics.

Why did I wait so long to read Rat Queens?? This ARC has been on my computer for at least a month, probably more. I'd heard about the series last fall, and the local comic store clerk recommended it to me after finding out I liked Image and played D&D. Seriously, though: it's a hilarious, well-drawn, action-packed AND character-driven story about an all-female adventuring party (with some queer action thrown in)! It's everything I've ever dreamed of!

The story opens with the town of Palisade deciding what to do about the rowdy parties of adventurers that, while ostensibly protecting the town, tend to cause a lot of commotion (and property damage). Enter the Rat Queens (through the wall of the building): a beardless dwarf named Violet, a drug-and-women-loving smidgen named Betty, a necromancing elf named Hannah, and a human(?) paladin named Dee who no longer follows her god. The Rat Queens and the rest of the adventurers are sentenced to some boring, run-of-the-mill quests to get them out of jail (and keep out of future trouble), but the missions are quickly revealed to be traps intended to kill them all.

From this fairly standard RPG beginning, it's easy to assume that the story would be cookie-cutter the rest of the way, too - lots of fighting, straightforward quests, lots of dungeons and/or dragons, and not much in terms of character development or world building. Thankfully, this story upends that expectation right away. There's a large, self-contained story in this volume and while the action is certainly thrilling and frequent, it serves mainly as part of a larger story about the relationships between these characters and this town. We get mid-battle flashbacks (due to magical effects) for some origin stories, we get complicated sexual and romantic relationships, we get a sense that this team loves each other deeply and *that* drives the action and the story.

The art is pretty fantastic - a perfect choice for this kind of story. Bold, strong lines, bright colors, and the right kind of detail that reflects and adds to the personality of each character. The artists changed a bit of the way through the series, but I wasn't looking for it, and couldn't tell.

The one drawback to the series is that several times, either due to scene changes or maybe just being slightly dense, I couldn't figure out what the dialogue was referring to. Sometimes flipping back helped, sometimes I was left puzzling and moved on. (For others who have read it, here's one of the points I could still use some clarification on: When Betty tells Hannah she's scared of her black eyes, what is she referring to? I flipped back to the previous scene but I didn't see any obvious eye changes.)

This edition was also lovely, with some extras in the back that riff on the characters and show us some cute extra artwork.

Would highly recommend to anyone who likes D&D, epic fantasy, great stories, and a fun, compelling read!

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Review: Junction True

Junction True by Ray Fawkes
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free e-galley of this book from Netgalley.

I had no expectations going into "Junction True." I knew it was a comic, and I assumed it was sci-fi since I'd requested the galley, but it had been so long since I'd read the description that I no longer remembered anything about it.

So at least I wasn't disappointed. This is a fairly solid, middle-of-the-pack story about body modification and power. The main character, a woman named Teralyn, is telling the first several issues of the story to what appears to be her lover. She's telling the story of her largest, most significant body modification.

In this world, mods are common (in certain circles, called Neumods) but fairly dangerous. They're also generally not mechanical; they're organic, like aphid tears you can install in your tear ducts to cry psychedelic tears, or tapeworms you can eat to make yourself skinny, or small creatures you can put under your skin to make colorful patterns. Of course, being insects and parasites and bacteria and viruses, these things can do a lot of damage. Teralyn meets Dirk at a club and he instantly falls in love with her. She instantly sees how she can use him; she tells him she only wants a puppet, and he agrees to be that puppet. Together, they decide to undertake a dangerous, horrifying mod, one that has been done on few people because it's illegal: they will essentially install junctions into their bodies that will make Dirk's digestion dependent on Teralyn. He can't process nutrients except as she feeds them through their junction. If she takes drugs and connects to him, he will get high whether he wants to or not.

Dirk's journalist friend Naoko doesn't think this is a good idea. (Neither do I.) She documents the stories of people whose Neumods have gone horribly wrong, and we see those interviews throughout the story. Some believe the mods ruined their lives, others think that their deformities are just one of many possible outcomes of Neumods - they made an informed decision going in, and they'd make it again. But Dirk agrees to this true junction (so named because the junctions are true to one another; no other link can be formed with them) after knowing Teralyn only a little more than a week, and Naoko is concerned.

She's right to be. Teralyn has never exactly hidden her crazy from Dirk, but she insists that they only refer to themselves as "I" or "we," never "you," and only "Teralyn," not Dirk. Only Teralyn exists. It may not even be a week before she runs off, leaving him to starve.

At this point, Teralyn stops narrating her story, saying she doesn't know or care what happened to him. She assumes he's dead. But then, he and Naoko enter. Dirk is hooked up to a machine, his junction torn out, and asks to speak to Teralyn alone while a video records them. He tells her he only wants to be a part of her again, and then kills himself. His friends are not so kind - they forcibly remove her junction and connect her to Dirk's machine.

We see that the true narrator is Naoko; this is perhaps a book, or video-chronicle, of the story she is compiling. She feels guilt for what she did to Teralyn and spends the rest of her life caring for the now-invalid woman.

The story is haunting and dark. The dynamic between Teralyn and Dirk falls just short of disturbing because Dirk, to me, doesn't feel hopelessly in love, or like he wants to be controlled, or like he actually knows what he wants at all; he feels stupid. We don't get much depth from him and could do with more. I'm not a fan of 'love at first sight' or Romeo & Juliet stories, both of which this story works with, because they feel shallow. That's a good word to describe my general feelings toward the book: shallow. It wants to say a lot about power, sex, relationships, autonomy, but it doesn't have much to say about them, and it lays it all out on the page. The characters aren't substantial enough to make up for the the brief plot, either, so it's left feeling lacking.

The art is, at times, beautiful. It reminds me of certain issues of The Sandman, with its angular faces, blue-washed watercolors and populated backgrounds. But it's also visually dark, and while there's a good amount of detail, it gets lost in the darkness. There's a grimy feel to it, which is certainly intentional since this is a cyberpunk-y world, but it doesn't appeal to me very much.

A quick, solid read that certainly wasn't bad, but wasn't excellent.

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Review: Descender, Vol. 1: Tin Stars

Descender, Vol. 1: Tin Stars by Jeff Lemire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free e-galley copy of this book from NetGalley.

When I initially saw "Descender" I was excited, but a little bit nervous. I read Lemire's "Trillium" over the summer, and while it was strikingly illustrated, I thought the story was incredibly lacking. My fears are alleviated, though! This comic seems much more plot-heavy, and the plot is more compelling.

Tim-21 is a robot. A very advanced robot that looks like a human boy, and is made to be a companion to human children as they grow. Tim-21 was created by Dr. Quon, the leading scientist in robotics. Almost as soon as the Tim series was created, though, giant robots larger than planets themselves appear next to each of the nine settled planets and begin to wreak havoc. Just as suddenly they disappeared. Ten years later, the UGC (the central governing body of the settled planets) tracks down Dr. Quon, because they think that the Tim series is somehow related to the appearance of the giant destructors.

Tim-21 wakes up after what he thinks is one night of 'sleep', only to find it's been ten years. After he was shut down for the night, a terrible virus killed all the human inhabitants of the mining colony where his 'family' lived. He and his dog-like pet robot are the only active beings on the moon - but not for long! The UGC is beaten there by a bunch of scrappers, who realize Tim-21's value and try to capture him, almost destroying him in the process. Tim-21 is saved by a driller robot (who yells "DRILLER IS KILLER. DRILL IS REAL KILLER" as he kills the scrappers) just in time for the UGC to come down and take them all off-planet.

And they're almost immediately captured by anti-UGC people and taken to a planet with a strong pro-robot faction. Dr. Quon is tortured and reveals that he didn't develop the technology behind Tim-21 on his own: his teacher found a super-advanced robot in an archaeological dig and Quon stole the credit, developing all his robots based on technology they don't even know the source of. So the theory that the Tim-series is somehow connected to the giant, planet-destroying robots is starting to look pretty good.

The story here feels like a wonderful space opera - lots of exciting reveals, strange worlds and weird aliens, mysterious technology. It's always about what's happening next, so at some points the story feels superficial, but there are also moments where it rises above, where it delves deeper and we see not just the comic's story but Tim-21's story. Either way, I'm always along for the ride.

Easily the best part of the comic is the artwork. It's full of beautifully vivid watercolor illustrations. The artist knows exactly when to use broad, saturated strokes, and when to focus on delicate detail. I was blown away by how stunning the art was, how easily I was taken into the world and how beautiful that world was.

Very much looking forward to the next volume of Descender!

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Review: Low, Vol. 2: Before the Dawn Burns Us

Low, Vol. 2: Before the Dawn Burns Us by Rick Remender
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free e-galley copy of this book from Image Comics.

I have gushed about Low, Volume 1 previously, and here I am to gush about Volume 2. If the artwork was stunning last time, it's decadently astonishing this time. The colors (which tend toward blue/orange, like Volume 1, but add in some lovely red/green/yellow and purple/green locales as well) are rich and layered. The oppositional color schemes work without looking cheesy because while the blues and oranges are rich and deep and pure, they're also nuanced; the blue has streaks of green, the orange streaks of red, both have streaks of yellow intermixed. I also still love the connection between color and location. In such a visually busy comic (that, as I mentioned last time, tends to skimp on backgrounds), the colors are a clear and beautiful way to establish location, so that detailed backgrounds for each panel aren't necessary.

One of the many things I love about the world created here - a world where everyone is forced underwater due to the toxic radiation of the sun, where humans have lived under the ocean for centuries - is that it echoes a lot of concerns in the solarpunk movement. Solarpunk is generally about fiction that has an optimistic view of the world (like the one Remender tries to convey here) and focuses on ecologically and socially sustainable futures. In terms of the literal world here, where most of the underwater colonies are in disrepair and societal collapse, it's not quite solarpunk, but the importance of sustainability is definitely a strong theme here, and I like that a lot.

My problem with Volume 1 re: the nakedness of all the ladies and the not-nakedness of all the men is somewhat rectified here. There are fewer ladies and fewer men, so fewer chances for disparity. Though it still succeeds in showing us the boobs of almost every female character to grace its pages.

I wish the story had flowed a little bit better here. Coming from the first volume, everything is mostly fine (except for the first sequence with Della, where it's initially unclear who the characters are or where it's taking place), but the switch from Della's story to her mother's and back across three issues makes this volume on its own feel choppy or uneven, as if it's not sure what story to tell at first. By the end, though, things feel fine; the focus is unequivocally back on mom and her journey to the surface.

Della's story arc also seemed brief - I wanted to savor her anger, her conflict in this society, but it resolves so quickly that I'm not even sure where she is (though this might be because it's been a while since I read Volume 1). I could read a whole volume, at least, about her life in this place, maybe about her youth. That goes for all the characters and all the locales, too. I just want so much more about this world, because it's so rich and invites so many story opportunities. Leaving a reader wanting more is definitely not a bad thing, though. Just a thought if this story wraps up soon - we're all eager to read more stories in this world!

There are still some trite-ness issues in the writing for the optimistic characters. Even when Stel becomes briefly disillusioned with her optimism, she seems one-dimensional - just in the opposite direction than usual. It makes the characters seem immature, like they can only hold one very literal interpretation of the world in their heads at once. And again, I have problems with the idea that their thoughts can literally change the world around them, because it's a strange belief for a person to hold. And it's executed pretty poorly. The characters say superficial things, they aren't allowed nuance in their understanding. It's single-mindedness, and it's frustrating.

Still - this is a beautifully illustrated comic, an intriguing and expansive world, and an interesting story to follow. I would definitely recommend this to anyone trying to get into comics who isn't into superheroes or is into beauty. Review was initially 3 stars, and then I realized that despite the technical issues I simply love this story so much I had to bump it to 4.

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