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- Book written by James S.A. Corey
- Published 4 June 2013
- Part 3 of The Expanse
As The Expanse progresses, its sci-fi may soften but the tension never slackens. Abaddon’s Gate is similar in structure to the previous instalments, following the story from separate points of view that intertwine as the plot progresses. This creates the series’ signature high pace, skipping from highlight to highlight as experienced by each of the characters at breakneck pace and keeping the reader glued to the pages.
Abaddon’s Gate also follows the series trajectory in moving from more technical hard science fiction to the softer kind where certain story elements are taken for granted and not explained. This also allows Abaddon’s Gate to take The Expanse new and exciting places that a more grounded narrative such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars-trilogy could not go.
This, I think, is one of The Expanse’s strengths: even as the core cast of characters remains constant, the backdrop of the development of their relationships shifts just a little every time, keeping the story fresh.
That changement de decor is also, however, taking The Expanse into more generic sci-fi territory. Whether this is a downside is up to you, but I found that it makes me less excited, not more excited to pick up the next book.
That is not to say that I won’t read it or expect to enjoy it – on the contrary. But I’m now reading The Expanse for the smooth prose, quick Hollywood-in-a-book-style action and to a lesser extent, the main characters.
In this particular case, there is something else as well: with the vast array of opportunities opened up at the end of Abaddon’s Gate, I’m very curious to see where Cibola Burn will take us. I already have a copy on my to read-shelf, so watch this space!
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- Novel written by Tamsyn Muir
- Published August 4th, 2020
- Part two of the Locked Tomb series
Last year, I listened to the audiobook of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. In my review, I stated that I wasn’t sure if the audiobook (though wonderfully narrated by Moira Quirk) had been the right choice for me, as Gideon the Ninth frequently left me extremely confused. I decided to buy the physical book of Harrow the Ninth for this very reason, and I’m glad I did. Being able to go back a couple of sentences whenever I didn’t understand what was going on was really helpful, because…
This book was still confusing, and not just because I couldn’t keep up with the audiobook (so I’m sure I would have struggled similarly with Gideon, had I read a physical copy of that). It’s the type of story where something has changed before the book starts (in this case, Harrow forgetting Gideon) and the reader is left to put together the puzzle as they read. I’m not great at puzzles, so this type of story structure usually doesn’t really work for me. And truly: it shouldn’t have worked. But there’s something about Muir’s writing that makes me happy to sit through pages and pages of confusion and enjoy it too.
Thankfully, there are fewer characters in Harrow the Ninth than in Gideon the Ninth. Unfortunately, I had just as difficult a time trying to keep them apart. This was partly because they all have like 3 names and if you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you who the saint of Duty was, or why the emperor gets referred to in 5 different ways. I had this problem in Gideon and it’s still kind of annoying and unnecessary, especially considering the relatively small cast of characters. It’s almost as if Muir is intentionally trying to confuse the reader. What doesn’t help is that Muir’s style is very snappy and quirky, sometimes at the expense of characterisation. Every character talks quite similarly, which makes them blur together.
Harrow the Ninth is written in part in second person, which – again – shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Like in Gideon, I really enjoyed the way this book was written. It’s extremely funny. Muir even sprinkles some memes throughout the book, which worked for me, but which I can imagine enraging other readers. I can imagine some people reacting very poorly to it.
Even after finishing it, I’m still not 100% sure I understood everything that happened in the story. Like, I just didn’t fully get it. But that’s okay! Despite there being a lot of aspects of this book that didn’t work for me, the overall charm of Muir’s setting and characters is so strong that Harrow the Ninth gets a solid four stars from me. I think these books would be particularly fun to reread after finishing the series, because I’m sure there’s so much that I missed on my first readthrough.
I even immediately went back to the store to find book three. Unfortunately, they only had an expensive hardcover, so back to the audiobooks I go!
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- Book written by T. Kingfisher (pseudonym for Ursula Vernon)
- Published 26 April 2022
- Standalone
Listened to the audiobook with Amara Jasper. I think she does a really good job.
I haven’t read all Hugo award winners, and I know the Hugo is no guarantee for a book I’ll like. I would often prefer one of the other nominees over the eventual winner. But of the ones I did read, it feels like I’d have to go back to Larry Niven’s Ringworld in 1971 to get to a winner that surprised me this much. Not just because there are better books on the shortlist, but mostly because I just don’t get the appeal.
If I’d be a braver man, I might argue that Nettle & Bone feels like poor Naomi Novik-clone without any of the feeling, but I’m afraid I’ll offend someone who actually likes this book.
Yes, Nettle & Bone has some of the ‘in a kingdom far away there lived a princess’-fairy-tale-esque energy, but I keep feeling like if that is what you are looking for, you should go read Spinning Silver or Uprooted (wait, we haven’t reviewed that?) instead.
Yes, Nettle & Bone has some of that low-conflict cosy fantasy energy, but if that is what you are looking for, I would emphatically recommend the also-nominated-for-the-same-Hugo Legends & Lattes over Nettle & Bone (and if you don’t mind sci-fi, The Long Way Round to a Small Angry Planet does it a lot better).
So what is the problem?
Nettle & Bone has a main character that is potentially interesting, a third daughter of the king of a small kingdom caught between two larger empires, who is sent to a convent, both for safe keeping and to make sure she doesn’t play a role in politics. That seems like a pretty good premise, but unfortunately, the main character never realises that potential. She is kind of mellow. Her main trait appears to be perseverance (I think?), but that just doesn’t play a role in the story (which is also because… well, there is never a challenge).
There is a cast of quirky side characters that are occasionally cute or funny. But they seem just a little too quirky. They’re often in the the eyeroll territory, occasionally bordering on cringey. It doesn’t help that there is a complete absence of conflict in this book. It’s not that I don’t buy their relationships, but the relationships are just immediately cosy. This also means that there is very little development, either of characters or of relationships. The result is a lot of bloodless, frictionless ‘and then this happened and then this happened’-style storytelling.
This seemingly forced simplicity also results in an almost compulsive absence of worldbuilding. That’s maybe a rough bit of criticism, and I get it probably says more about my expectations and tastes than it does about Nettle & Bone. But combined with the underdeveloped main character and the cute-but-flat side characters, the lack of worldbuilding meant that I felt Nettle & Bone was just a bit boring.
Aggressively inoffensive, Nettle & Bone just never managed to excite me. Everything in this book is simple and mellow. There are occasionally good scenes, but overall, I’d much rather read something with actual tension.
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Time to get to know the Escape Velocity Collection’s curators! How? By asking them the questions that really matter! Let’s see what our curators have to say…
Today’s question is:
Which fantasy/sci-fi character would you like to go on a date with?
Damn. I came up with this question myself and I have no idea.
I tend not to fall in love with characters I read/watch/play, maybe I enjoy media from a bit more distance than most of the other curators on this site… I could name some characters from television played by good-looking actresses, but that would feel like cheating. Besides, a date implies a relationship, so I ought to look deeper anyway.
I’ve recently re-read the Saga of Pliocene Exile and I find that I like the female characters that Julian May writes – I wouldn’t mind going for tea and carrot cake with Elizabeth or Mercy (though given their backgrounds, neither is relationship material). I’ve alway thought Imoen’s voice from Baldur’s Gate sounded really cute, so if that’s a thing to go by we could go for a nice hike sometime. I remember I really liked Dr. Rose Franklin from the Themis Files – she seems really smart and caring. Maybe we could go visit a museum together. She’s probably my top-1 candidate for a second date!
Peter
Lotte
Oh man this is both such a difficult but also easy question. There’s a lot of Bioware video game characters I would happily marry on the spot. I love video games that allow you to romance characters, because the romances are often the funniest part of a game, and the good people of Bioware know what I like. Still, if we’re just talking about one date…
I’d probably have to say Kassandra from Assassins’ Creed Odyssey. Look, she’s hot. There’s just no way around it. During this game, I was constantly distracted because of Kassandra’s voice acting. I want her to crush me like a grape. Or feed me grapes. Or we could just go on a date.
Oh, my… I’ll admit that I share Lotte’s sentiment when it comes to Bioware’s romances & characters. Dragon Age 2’s Merrill stole my heart the moment she babbled her way through our first conversation. Along the same lines, I’ll never forget my romantic journey with Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Josephine Montilyet; the despair when she told me she had to marry another, and the poorly thought-out duel I fought to win her hand back.
A date, however… Bioware characters aside, I would like to see how a date with The 100’s Lexa would turn out. Intelligent, beautiful and fierce as she is, yet with a hidden softer side. However the date would turn out, I suspect it wouldn’t get boring. Kettricken from Robin Hobb’s The Realm of the Elderlings is also a serious candidate. I would love getting to know her better.
Jop
Robin
I had just started going through a list of possible options when I realised the answer was obvious: of course I would want to go on a date with Lee Scoresby (from His Dark Materials). He’s charming and funny, adventurous, and also just generally a really good guy. What’s not to like? Plus, I figure the date would include a trip in his air balloon, so count me in!
I think I’d fall for Tauriel from The Hobbit movies. She follows her heart and believes in a better world, despite what others try to teach her. Furthermore, she is capable and persistent, traits I can always appreciate in a potential love interest. Also, Evangeline Lilly is not unpleasant to look at…
Jasmijn
That’s it: another soul-searching question answered!
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Check out our reviews of the media discussed in this post here:
What do you get when two of the biggest authors in the speculative genre team up to write a science fiction story? As it turns out, something really, really mediocre.
With this story, I’m really wondering whether I’m being fair. It is a clear attempt to write something of a concept-based story in the tradition of, for example, Philip K. Dick. And Philip K. Dick stories can be really, really wacky. But I tend to give them a pass.
The Original, however, doesn’t get that pass from me. It’s really out there, and the wackyness just kept jerking me out of the story.
Who ever came up with the bizarre idea that, if you can’t track down a murderer, you clone them with extra combat abilities, and have them do it for you? Why would that work? And you don’t just consult with them on the way their original might think, no, you literally let them roam the streets freely and hope they stick to the assignment. In this case, it makes even less sense, because the clone has no reason to want to return to their previous life, since, you know, they murdered their husband?
I get that the premise results in some interesting scenes and questions but it’s just… and I struggle to find a socially acceptable way to put it – extremely far fetched.
The paucity of the main premise means that the other elements of the story that could be interesting (for example, the idea that everyone can ‘program’ the world around them to look like they want) are pushed to the background and don’t get the attention and development they need to make justify reading the story for them.
What is more, The Original is like anything by Sanderson, in that it just feels like film script sold as a book. It is very descriptive of environments and combat that you know would have an impact on the big screen, but which just don’t work on paper.
Yes, I can imagine it all, but it takes a lot of work and I find that generally I don’t bother perfectly visualising the relative positions of all combatants in a fight before they all drop down in an orgy of violence a page on. I get that the idea of the world being ‘blank’ is intended to be visually shocking, but if I’m not actually presented with white walls on a big screen to blow me away, all I can think is “why painstakingly keep everything white?”.
Overall, a story with a poor premise that tried to cram too much into too little space. A big disappointment. Little else to be said.
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- Book written by Martha Wells
- Published 2018
- Part 3 in the Murderbot Diaries
Listened to the audiobook with Kevin R. Free – as before, decent listening but wasn’t too impressed with his rendition.
After a good first instalment in All Systems Red, I was a bit disappointed with Artificial Condition, so I put on Rogue Protocol just to check if that was a return to form. For me, it wasn’t, as Wells didn’t address my main let downs with Artificial Condition.
As before, the book explores the different types of conceivable artificial (and hybrid) intelligences, and the possible relationships of humans to them. The Murderbot encounters a variety of systems and engages with them on different terms, with more of a focus on combat in this particular instalment. The feeling remains, however, that it never becomes quite clear what the Murderbot – or its friends and opponents – can and cannot do; it tends to be explained after the fact instead. I recognise that novellas have a lot less room for worldbuilding, but we’re in part three already and I would have expected some level of clarity by now.
The fact that we don’t have any rules – and that Wells doesn’t seem to make an effort to present them – indicates to me that she isn’t going to explain it to us, and that it just isn’t the point of the story.
This frustrates me, because I think the Murderbot Diaries are more than worthy of the praise and prizes they have received, and I love the idea of what Wells does with the series – quick paced novellas with modern themes each set in an interesting new environment. She has just made a number of choices in style of sci-fi and storytelling that aren’t my cup of tea, so I end up giving them mediocre reviews even though I think they are five-star worthy for some readers.
Moral of the story is: give All Systems Red a shot if the character of the Murderbot seems interesting to you, there is a good chance you’ll love it and never mind any of my gripes. If you recognise my nit-picking, then it is probably not worth getting the rest too, since it doesn’t appear to be getting better over the series.
I don’t hate The Murderbot Diaries, so I might pick up the next instalments if I’m in for easy listening some time. But in general, unfortunately, not my thing.
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Review: Abaddon’s Gate – James S.A. Corey
Part three of the Expanse – Just as Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante try to distance themselves from politics and wriggle their way out under the OPA’s thumb, events conspire to bring him to The Ring, a giant protomolecule structure hovering in space among the outer planets. As fleets from Earth , Mars and the Belt converge on the Ring, politics are inevitable. Carlos de Baca runs security in the Belter fleet, thoug his Earth-provenance puts him in difficult position. Anna Volodovna is a preacher from the outer planets invited by Earth to join the spiritual leaders in the fleet to make sense of it all. Meanwhile, on a small maintenance ship traveling with the Earth armada, engineer Melba Koh hatches a destructive plan.
Review: Harrow the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir
After the events in Canaan House, Harrow is finally raised to Lyctorhood and takes her place among her fellow Lyctors. However, she finds herself struggling with her new position. Her transformation was imperfect, and she doesn’t have all the powers the other Lyctors have. Her memory is woozy, she doesn’t remember Gideon at all, and she has a set of envelopes she’s written before losing her memory, with instructions for several hypothetical scenarios. Meanwhile, the Lyctors prepare for the arrival of a Resurrection Beast hell-bent on killing the Emperor.
Review: Nettle & Bone – T. Kingfisher
Princess Mara is the third daughter of the king of a small realm caught in between two larger kingdoms. She is sent to a convent, mostly to be out of the way, but when her sister is married off to an evil prince, she gathers a band of misfits around her to free her sister from a dangerous marriage.
Curator Question: Which fantasy/sci-fi character would you like to go on a date with?
Our curators consider dating characters from their favourite fantasy and sci-fi stories. With whom would they want to have a cozy rendezvous?
Review: The Original – Brandon Sanderson & Mary Robinette Kowal
Holly wakes up in confusion, a chunk of her memory missing, only to find out she is a clone of herself, her original having murdered her husband. She is given less than a week’s time to track down her original, kill her, and take her place.
Review: Rogue Protocol – Martha Wells
Part 3 in the Murderbot Diaries – Following the revelations of Artificial Condition, our Murderbot travels to a far-flung orbital mining facility to further investigate the crimes of its former owners. It infiltrates an expedition sent there to assess the condition of the facility before a full salvage operation will commence, by making friends with a robot who has a relationship with their owner unlike any the Murderbot has encountered before.
