Book Impressions: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds

I love Classic Who. I especially love the Third Doctor. Those who know me, know well just how much I love the Third Doctor. It's pretty embarrassing, really - or would be, if he wasn't so damn awesome. And so hot.

Anyway, I've seen all the televised Three stories and I've read every single piece of written Three material I've got my hands on - I am missing a couple of the Big Finish Short Trips books, but other than that, I've read every Three tie-in novel (Virgin Missing Adventures, BBC Past Doctor Adventures) and short story there is. And as every Classic Who fan knows, other than this year's Doctor Who 50th Anniversary monthly e-shorts, one per each incarnation of the Doctor, there's been a complete lack of new past Doctor stories & novels for quite a few years now.

So when I found out that there'd be a brand new Three novel out this year, as part of BBC's current effort to get acclaimed science fiction authors write tie-in novels for the classic series Doctors, I was both extremely excited and not a little worried. Would it be awesome? I've waited for new Third Doctor material for years - would I be disappointed? I tried my best to dampen my enthusiasm and expectations and hope for a good read, not something earth-shattering.

Harvest of Time

Alastair Reynolds

****

One of science fiction's most acclaimed authors delivers a spectacular original novel in the Doctor Who universe featuring the Third Doctor, as played by Jon Pertwee.

After billions of years of imprisonment, the vicious Sild have broken out of confinement. From a ruined world at the end of time, they make preparations to conquer the past, with the ultimate goal of rewriting history. But to achieve their aims they will need to enslave an intellect greater than their own...

On Earth, UNIT is called in to investigate a mysterious incident on a North Sea drilling platform. The Doctor believes something is afoot, and no sooner has the investigation begun when something even stranger takes hold: The Brigadier is starting to forget about UNIT's highest-profile prisoner. And he is not alone in his amnesia.

As the Sild invasion begins, the Doctor faces a terrible dilemma. To save the universe, he must save his arch-nemesis... The Master.

Harvest of Time would have felt right at home during season 8 or 9, featuring the Master at his charming (and ruthless) best, the UNIT capable and familiar, Jo enthusiastic and willing to take initiative. Come to think of it, I have to say in many ways the Doctor really came off as the weaker character here, compared to the Master, although it fit in with the show - and the Master/Doctor relationship, the central point of the book (in addition to the action-and-time-travel-oriented plot) was portrayed beautifully.

I think my only complaint is really that there was a bit too much Doctor/Master and far too little Doctor/Jo, but that's an issue of personal preference (and I absolutely adored Roger Delgado's Master, so it's not truly an issue either). Another complaint might be that the novel was a little too close to Three's era as we saw it on TV (just with much better special effects, obviously), with no risk-taking at all, but since it is my absolute favourite Doctor Who era, I'm really quite happy with that.

Book Impressions: Artifact by Gigi Pandian

Artifact by Gigi Pandian was one of those "hmm, haven't heart any buzz about this but it sounds potentially fun/interesting" books I sometimes come across on NetGalley, and treasure hunt adventure is a genre I enjoy sometimes, so I figured I could just as well request it. And I'm pretty glad I did, as it's just the kind of book that is exactly what the blurb promises - no more but also no less - and definitely a fun read when one is in the mood for that kind of book.

Artifact

Gigi Pandian

***

When historian Jaya Jones receives a mysterious package containing a jewel-encrusted artifact from India, she discovers the secrets of a lost Indian treasure may be hidden in a Scottish legend from the days of the British Raj. But she’s not the only one on the trail.

From San Francisco to the Highlands of Scotland, Jaya must evade a shadowy stalker as she follows hints from the hastily scrawled note to a remote archaeological dig. Helping her decipher the cryptic clues are her magician best friend, a devastatingly handsome art historian with something to hide, and a charming archaeologist running for his life. When a member of the dig’s crew is murdered, Jaya must figure out which of the scholars vying for her affections might be the love of her life—and which one is a killer.

I'm not exactly original in saying this, but Artifact is very much a story in the vein of Elizabeth Peters' Vicky Bliss mysteries, combining adventure with treasure hunt, murders, academics, humour and a dash of romance.

Is it as good? Hmm. The Vicky Bliss stories I've read so far aren't my favourite Elizabeth Peters books (that honour goes to her Amelia Peabody series), but they're nice, entertaining, fun reads, and Pandian's Artifact is much the same.

I found the pacing pretty good, the research & historical detail interesting (it was obvious the author had either done considerable research into the chosen topics or rather already wisely based the action/mysteries in a field she's familiar with), plenty of twists and turns along the way to keep me guessing (some of the twists I could predict, others not). The cast of characters was interesting and varied enough and the dialogue flowed reasonably well.

I also liked that the romance, the implication of which was there from early on, never overtook the plot. I'm not sure I quite cared for how easily Jaya trusted Lane or how quickly that romance seemed to develop, perhaps because I prefer a bit more than "he has gorgeous cheekbones" to go on, but it wasn't really any worse than in most books with some romance.

My main issue was that I felt there was comparatively a little too much telling and too little showing for my taste. The parts with action - the parts where Jaya and Lane actually got up to stuff - were good and well-paced, but there were perhaps a few too many (and too long) parts where one or another character simply told others (and the reader) things we needed to know, whether background, exposition, or simply "what happened before". Some of this is of course needed and useful, but I'm not sure the balance was quite perfectly captured in Artifact.

This is also why I'm rating this three stars ("I liked it") and not four ("I loved it"). I did enjoy the book, and may well be interested in reading the next one.

* ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!

Book Impressions: The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

I admit: I was really drawn to this book because of the cover. The blurb, too, but mostly the cover. There was just something so beautifully melancholy about it.

The Mad Scientist's Daughter

Cassandra Rose Clarke

****

“Cat, this is Finn. He’s going to be your tutor.”

Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion… and more.

But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

This is one of those four and a half star books, really. It's not quite five though, hence the four.

I found it difficult to find the words for a Goodreads comment when I read the book, and to be honest, I still really cannot; suffice it to say that I cried, and then I cried some more, and I don't actually cry that often at books. And I cannot say for certain whether it was because the book was so good, or whether it was because it was a book that resonated with me for my own reasons. Either way, it seemed tailor-made for me in many ways (and not so much in other ways, but even those ended up working for me).

Comparisons with Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover are probably inevitable, at least by anyone who has read both - there were just enough similarities in this human-girl-falls-in-love-with-android-man tale to bring it to mind and to justify drawing some parallels. It's a very different story in every way, though, both in the writing style and in the plot, and The Mad Scientist's Daughter stands just fine on its own.

I am in two minds about the episodic nature of this book. On the one hand, I'm not sure it was always a good thing, leaving gaps of many years between chapters, as this did leave Cat, the protagonist, a little distant; on the other hand, I think the style (and the distance) actually worked in its favour at times. In any case, I think it did work for me.

Book Impressions: Blades of Winter by G. T. Almasi

When I picked up this book, for some reason I had assumed it was urban fantasy - probably because of the feisty-looking heavily-armed young woman on the cover. Should anyone else wonder, it's not urban fantasy but rather an alternative-history thriller with some sci-fi technology.

Blades of Winter

G. T. Almasi

**

In one of the most exciting debuts in years, G. T. Almasi has fused the intricate cat-and-mouse games of a John le Carré novel with the brash style of comic book superheroes to create a kick-ass alternate history that reimagines the Cold War as a clash of spies with biological, chemical, and technological enhancements.

Nineteen-year-old Alix Nico, a self-described “million-dollar murder machine,” is a rising star in ExOps, a covert-action agency that aggressively shields the United States from its three great enemies: the Soviet Union, Greater Germany, and the Nationalist Republic of China. Rather than risk another all-out war, the four superpowers have poured their resources into creating superspies known as Levels.

Alix is one of the hottest young American Levels. That’s no surprise: Her dad was America’s top Level before he was captured and killed eight years ago. But when an impulsive decision explodes—literally—in her face, Alix uncovers a conspiracy that pushes her to her limits and could upset the global balance of power forever.

Good things about this book: interesting world-building (a world where World War II ended very differently indeed), with clearly a good amount of thought put into things. LOTS of action. Exciting. As a big-screen, big-budget spy action thriller, this would be perfect.

Bad things about this book: Alix. God I hated her. Loathed. I don't think I've felt this much antipathy for the protagonist of a book in ages, and it being in first person really didn't help. I just wanted to punch her in the face (or rather have someone stronger than me do it). Towards the end, I seriously started to hope she'd be killed.

She's just such an obnoxious, insane idiot that .. eurgh. I think I ended up hating absolutely everything about her.

This might have been a four star book with a heroine that was at least somewhat likeable. As it is, I'm only giving it two because it was exciting and had a semi-decent plot. For those with more tolerance for incredibly irritating protagonists, and who happen to like high-octane action-driven stories, I'd happily recommend it, though.

Book Impressions: Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza

When I first heard about Mila 2.0, I was really excited - the blurb made it sound like a book with a lot of potential.

The blurb did not lie. Mila 2.0 did indeed have a lot of potential. Unfortunately the book did not quite deliver, not the way I'd hoped, and most of that potential was left unfulfilled. This doesn't mean it was a bad book - I think many of the target group will find it great, adrenaline-filled fun! - but it could have been so much better.

Mila 2.0

 

Debra Driza

 

***

 

 

Mila was living with her mother in a small Minnesota town when she discovered she was also living a lie.

She was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was never supposed to remember the past—that she was built in a computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much, and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology.

Evading her enemies won't help Mila escape the cruel reality of what she is and cope with everything she has had to leave behind. However, what she's becoming is beyond anyone's imagination, including her own, and that just might save her life.

A compulsively readable sci-fi thriller, Mila 2.0 is Debra Driza's bold debut and the first book in an action-filled, Bourne Identity–style trilogy.

I have to admit I really struggled with the first part. Mila, our protagonist, was not by any means a particularly dreadful "typical" teenage girl, but she was... well, a teenage girl, and the first part of the novel was very much focused on teenage girl daily life - school troubles, brand name dropping (oh dear, the brand name dropping and the descriptions of clothes), crushing on a cute boy pretty much at first sight...

And this brings me to one of the things I really disliked - both about this book and a trend in girl-protagonist YA fiction these days in general: there are very rarely any other girls, apart from the protagonist, who are in any way allowed to be cool, decent human beings. Nope - we have our awesome protagonist, and then we have the mean, bitchy girls who only care about parties and clothes and boys and can't wait to stab other girls in the back. (Oh, and if there are any other girls in addition, they're the mousy, pointless, useless wallpaper, just barely existing.) Unfortunately this was one of the many, many tropes and clichés in this book.

Things did get more interesting once the actual plot turned up in part two, and while I found the plot itself really rather ridiculous, there was a lot of fast-paced action and some occasionally nice introspection from Mila to make for some reasonably exciting reading.

On the other hand, I was somewhat irritated by the inclusion of yet another trope - the dreaded love triangle. Well... I suppose it didn't quite materialise, but considering the numerous times we got to read about Lucas's gold-tipped eyelashes (while Mila appeared to have almost forgotten about her high school insta-crush Hunter), it was clearly meant to be there to make the reader wonder. The only saving grace for both the insta-crush and the budding love triangle was that both Hunter and Lucas were, if not particularly fascinating characters, then at least not unappealing.

All in all, I think this is a book that may appeal to the actual target group, i.e. teen girls who also want some action and adrenaline in their reading, but I'm not at all sure of its crossover potential to adult readers.

* ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!

Book Impressions: Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells

Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells was another Strange Chemistry subscription book I might not even have known of without taking that plunge. As it is, this was one of the books I was actually eager to read once I had it downloaded - I loved the cover, the blurb sounded fun, and overall, it had the feel of a book that would be just up my alley.

Emilie and the Hollow World

 

Martha Wells

 

****

 

While running away from home for reasons that are eminently defensible, Emilie’s plans to stow away on the steamship Merry Bell and reach her cousin in the big city go awry, landing her on the wrong ship and at the beginning of a fantastic adventure.

Taken under the protection of Lady Marlende, Emilie learns that the crew hopes to use the aether currents and an experimental engine, and with the assistance of Lord Engal, journey to the interior of the planet in search of Marlende’s missing father.

With the ship damaged on arrival, they attempt to traverse the strange lands on their quest. But when evidence points to sabotage and they encounter the treacherous Lord Ivers, along with the strange race of the sea-lands, Emilie has to make some challenging decisions and take daring action if they are ever to reach the surface world again.

I should say right away that I'm rating this book as a children's (middle grade) book, not young adult, which, I think, it's theoretically supposed to be.

It didn't read like YA. It read pure middle-grade to me, right down to Emilie, the heroine, coming off far more as 12-14 than 16 which she was supposed to be. The writing style, the plot, the occasionally unnecessary explanations to the reader - all that felt "young" to me (with the possible exception of occasional references to prostitutes).

That said, once I'd adjusted my mindset and read it like a children's adventure instead of young adult fantasy, I really liked it. It reminded me a lot (in the general sense of wonder and adventure) of Jules Verne's work or Conan Doyle's Challenger books, although it was set in a fantasy world, not "our" world (one rather like ours / sort of 19th century feel, just with magic). The pacing was good (at least I didn't find it dragging), the adventures exciting, the heroine spunky and feisty and brave while not being superpowered, the supporting cast largely fairly good.

I'm not entirely keen on the hint of Emilie/Daniel we got from this book (I take it that there are more planned, although this works very well as a standalone), but, eh. I'll withhold judgement on that for the time being - if there are more books planned, I expect we'll see how that relationship develops.

Book Impressions: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

I bought Cinder, the first book in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, some time early on in 2012 - and then I sort of forgot about it. 

'A fairytale retelling,' I scoffed to myself. 'I'm really not even sure why I bought it - why should I want to read a retelling of Cinderella anyway?'

And yet, seeing positive reactions from here and there, including people whose tastes I'd come to trust, I finally picked it up, months later.

Cinder & Scarlet

**** & ****

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

I read it, and ... 2012 was a good book year for me, with several new books/series that I loved, and Cinder was definitely among them. It did not get quite close enough to five stars for me, but as close as possible.

I just enjoyed it tremendously. Yes, the big plot reveal was extremely predictable, and the whole central "the prince instantly falls for her" thing is, well, wouldn't make sense or wouldn't be to my taste ordinarily, but seeing as it's a Cinderella retelling, I didn't really have an issue with it here.

But the plot was clever, Cinder was an awesome protagonist, the writing was great (well, it didn't have anything to turn me off!), I liked the setting, I liked the secondary characters. My only complaint was that Scarlet wasn't out yet and I had to wait!

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

I was genuinely curious as to how Meyer will manage to tie all those different fairytales into one coherent overall story arc. As much as I was looking forward to Scarlet, I wasn't entirely sure it could be done, to be honest.

I was glad to see I was wrong. Scarlet is, of course, Scarlet's tale, more than anything else - but it ties into Cinder's story in ways that make sense, and I was happy to see that a reasonable chunk of this book was still devoted to Cinder. The only quibbles I had were to do with Wolf; it's not as if I disliked him, really, but he just didn't appeal to me all that much.

The Lunar Chronicles will contain two more novels, Cress and Winter, and I'm extremely excited about both of them. There are also a number of short stories already available, set in this universe, but I've yet to read them.

Book Impressions: Poltergeeks by Sean Cummings

Last year I decided to expand my horizons a bit and bought a 12 month subscription to the output of Strange Chemistry (young adult fiction imprint of Angry Robot, a relatively small but interesting independent publisher).

As part of that subscription, I've been getting 1-2 books a month - several of them such that I wouldn't have been aware of them otherwise, never mind bought them. I haven't yet got around to reading each and every one of those books, but I've rather enjoyed those that I have.

Poltergeeks

 Sean Cummings

* * *

15-year-old Julie Richardson is about to learn that being the daughter of a witch isn't all it's cracked up to be. When she and her best friend, Marcus, witness an elderly lady jettisoned out the front door of her home, it's pretty obvious to Julie there's a supernatural connection.

In fact, there's a whisper of menace behind increasing levels of poltergeist activity all over town. After a large-scale paranormal assault on Julie's high school, her mother falls victim to the spell Endless Night. Now it's a race against time to find out who is responsible or Julie won't just lose her mother's soul, she'll lose her mother's life.

Fun and well-paced (in other words fast-paced and never dull), but the characterisations were somewhat shallow, the magic didn't feel very thoroughly thought out (that might be because half the time we got descriptions like "she whispered a word of magic" or "she uttered a strong word of magic") and the characters took all the major revelations far too easily in stride.

Also, the writing could have done with another round of editing - especially in the first half, there were semicolons all over the place (in places where they really shouldn't have been), there were sentences that made no grammatical sense at all ("In order to pull a spirit back from either domain would require some pretty amazing magic"), and Matthew Hopkins, England's Witchfinder General who died in 1647, was constantly referred to as having been dead for "over four hundred and fifty years" or "over four hundred years" - and I really didn't get the impression the book was supposed to be taking place in 2050 at the earliest.

Still, overall it was a decent enough read, if a little shallow.

Book Impressions: The Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness

The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness, consisting of three novels - The Knife Of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men - and several short stories is a young adult science fiction series set in a rather bleak future, on a planet colonised by humans who left Earth for a better life elsewhere.

Today's world of young adult fiction is full of dystopian tales, many of them quite openly and obviously inspired by one another (or mostly The Hunger Games). Chaos Walking, while set in a rather dystopian society as well, is very much unlike everything else, and not just because of the obvious - the deliberate choice of language/style, or being set in a distant world.

I started with The Knife of Never Letting Go (which is recommended, by the way - leave The New World, although it's a prequel, until after you've read the trilogy!). And .. I admit, I very nearly gave up on this book at about 5% into it. 

The writing (not so much the spelling, but the stream-of-consciousness, the noise of it and in it, in spite of realising almost immediately that this part was deliberate and actually served a purpose) was almost enough to drive me up the walls, and Todd, the main character, came off as rather unlikeable on top of that.

I'm glad I persisted. Oh yes, I'm glad. Once I got used to the noisiness of the writing (if the choice of word strikes you as odd, anyone who starts reading these books will get my meaning almost immediately), and got more into the story, it gradually developed into a rather interesting and reasonably original YA dystopia. There was plenty of predictability, in many ways, but also some twists I hadn't expected, and quite a bit of character development for Todd - even some for Viola, although she felt a lot more like just a prop for Todd's development. When reading the first book, I was hoping she'd get to be her own person in the sequels, and fortunately, that does indeed happen.

In spite of eventually liking The Knife of Never Letting Go, it took me months to actually pick up the next book - because it is hard work, reading this writing. On the other hand, once I picked up the second book, I could hardly stop - and read The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men and The New World right after one another.

The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men both ended up five star reads for me, and I don't hand out five stars lightly. In this case, too, I did it with some hesitation; I felt that as much as I loved these books, in several ways they were still far from perfect. Not just because of the language/style still bothered me to an extent (although I did eventually get used to it and felt it was a justified, clever choice by Ness); I don't even mean that so much of it was completely predictable - which, actually, was a good thing in this case, as it means the actions, the decisions, the choices, the things people did, it all came off realistic.

On the other hand, when I try to think of all those flaws to list here... I can't really come up with anything actually worth putting down. Both of these books were just... gripping. And desperate. And wonderful.

The New World, being a short story, was not quite as satisfying a read for me, but it did offer an intriguing glimpse into Viola's life before she landed on the planet.

Patrick Ness recently published a few additional short stories set in this world, but I haven't yet got around to reading them. I fully intend to, though.

Adult Urban Fantasy Read in the First Half of 2013: A Round-Up

Last year I embarked on a journey to try and read as many first books in various urban fantasy series as I could, in order to find new series to really sink my teeth into.

The list of what I read (and categorised as urban fantasy), with my impressions, in 2012, can be found here on Goodreads. I've read less urban fantasy in 2013, mostly because I started feeling a bit burned out on it and having trouble remembering the individual books mere days after I'd finished them. Still, I've read a few and plan to read more, so here's a round-up of what I read in the genre in the first six months of 2013 with mini-reviews/general impressions. I'm not going to summarise the content - the titles are links to each individual book's Goodreads page where you can find the blurb.

A New Purpose: Book Blog!

Although I've been cataloguing and reviewing the books I read on Goodreads for a while now, I've been considering setting up a separate blog for book reviews as well. 

And then I remembered I've had this one here, languishing all alone, for a while now - so why not repurpose it? Or rather give it a purpose in the first place, as it never actually had one.

It's not going to be a carbon copy of my Goodreads account - over there, I add everything I read, including books in series (in which case I don't always have a lot to say about each separate entry, depending on the series and whether I'm reading it all in one go or with months between books) or books I just feel "meh" about and can't think of anything to say. I read on average 10-15 books a month, so trying to come up with deep, thoughtful reviews for all of them would frankly be too time-consuming!

Over here, I'll be talking about the books I've received for reviewing as well as anything else that catches my fancy, including trips into the past and squeeing about upcoming books I can't wait for. Comments, suggestions, recommendations, thoughts in general - all of those are more than welcome.