Humanity has been on the losing end of a centuries-long war with the Superiority, the main organization of galactic races, for decades, trapped on a dHumanity has been on the losing end of a centuries-long war with the Superiority, the main organization of galactic races, for decades, trapped on a desolate planet called Detritus and fighting an ongoing war using outdated, small spacecraft to keep from being exterminated. In the second book in this series, Starsight, Spensa Nightshade, a young spaceship pilot who first distinguished herself in Skyward, found a way to leave Detritus and travel to Starsight, a massive alien space station where the galactic government is located. Spensa joined the alien space pilot training program at Starsight while spying on the Superiority to try to find a way for humanity to better fight their captors. She also discovered the hyperjumping capabilities of her alien pet Doomslug, as well as the massive and deadly alien life forms called delvers, that can be manipulated to swallow a space station or planet whole and destroy it.
As Starsight ended and hostile alien soldiers were closing in on her, Spensa took a leap, literally, into the unknown: she entered a portal into another dimension, called the “nowhere,” along with her AI sidekick M-Bot. Cytonic, Brandon Sanderson’s third book in the SKYWARD series, begins immediately on the heels of her stepping into this unknown dimension. Spensa hopes to use this portal to make her way back to her home and friends on Detritus, especially the friend for whom she’s developed Feelings. But a single delver encourages Spensa to stay and look for answers to the many questions she has about her own “cytonic” (psychic) abilities, and how she can hone those abilities to help her people.
The friendly delver tells Spensa to walk the Path of Elders, whatever that is, in the nowhere. However, Spensa’s plans are sidelined when she is promptly captured by one of the alien pirate gangs that inhabit the nowhere. Soon enough an energetic, chipper human, who goes by the unlikely name of Chet Starfinder, and even more improbably is riding on a dinosaur, thunders to her rescue. Chet cheerfully joins in Spensa’s plans to find and follow the Path of Elders, and though she is mistrustful of his motives, she needs his help to navigate the unique territory of the nowhere. Perhaps they can steal a starship from one of these ubiquitous pirate gangs?
The nowhere is a mysterious, otherworldly place. Huge fragments of land, each with its own unique climate and landscape, float around in space and occasionally collide with each other. In the nowhere, time and days melt into each other and a person’s memory tends to fade away. Chet seems to be someone whose original personality and memory has been lost, although Spensa thinks she may know who he is. But Spensa begins having trouble keeping her own memory and sense of purpose intact in the nowhere.
For many of its pages, Cytonic feels like a major detour in the overarching plot of this series, albeit a fairly entertaining one: we’re in an entirely new world, with a completely new cast of characters other than Spensa and M-Bot, and on a brand new quest that seems only tangentially related to the missions Spensa had in the prior two books. But Sanderson, of course, has a master plan, and it’s fascinating once a few surprising twists occur, previously hidden information starts to be revealed, and the pieces finally start falling into place.
Cytonic clarifies the link between the SKYWARD series and one of Sanderson’s older stories, Defending Elysium, which takes place centuries earlier, and Sanderson fans will find it worthwhile to check out (or revisit) that novelette, which is available to read on his website. Fans of this series may also be interested in three tie-in novellas/audiobooks that Sanderson has co-written with Janci Patterson: Sunreach, ReDawn and Evershore, which focus on other characters in this series (Freyja, Alanik, and Jorgen). Spensa’s adventures will be concluded in the fourth book in this series, Defiant, scheduled to be published in 2023....more
3.5 stars for this final book in the Aurora Cycle SF trilogy. Full review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Aurora’s End begins and finishes with3.5 stars for this final book in the Aurora Cycle SF trilogy. Full review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Aurora’s End begins and finishes with a bang — literally, lots of them — and sandwiches all kinds of wild events in between. (Note: this review includes some spoilers for the prior books in this series.)
When we left Squad 312, a group of young adult space academy grads trying to save the galaxy, at the end of book #2, Aurora Burning, they were split into three groups, ALL of them on the verge of being murdered in one way or another. As I commented in my review of Aurora Burning, “Kaufman and Kristoff must have worked really hard to come up with a cliffhanger of that scope and magnitude.” They’re either on the verge of being blown up by space missiles or being assaulted by Caersan, the psychopathic leader of a warrior clan whose warmongering Squad 312 has been trying to foil.
Caersan has a spaceship armed with incredibly powerful alien technology that was supposed to be used to stop the evil Ra’haam, an alien species that is trying to assimilate everyone in the galaxy into their hive mind. It’s kind of a Borg-like group, except they use plant spores to assimilate people instead of technology. But instead of using the ship’s weapon to kill the Ra’haam’s planets, as intended by the ship’s makers, Caersan is using it to kill the stars and planets where his enemies live and generally terrorize the galaxy.
Spoiler alert: no one in Squad 312 dies (well, at least not permanently) as those cliffhangers from Aurora Burning are worked out in the initial chapters of this book. But three of our heroes get zapped a couple of hundred years into the past, where they get trapped in a destructive time loop with a hostile space pilot. Two others in the group (along with Caersan and his weapon ship) get bounced a few decades into the future, when the Ra’haam has nearly completed its goal of assimilating all the races in the galaxy that it can and wiping out the rest. Meanwhile, in the present, the group’s leader Tyler has hooked up with Saedii, the warrior daughter of Caersan who is nearly as scary and deadly as her father, and is working overtime to convince her and her crew to let him try to prevent the Ra’haam from blowing up a conclave where the leaders of all spacefaring races in the galaxy are gathering.
The pace of Aurora’s End is very quick, almost frantic at times, and it kept me glued to my chair for an entire evening and well into the night. The writing style is breezy and the humor snarky. It’s an exciting roller coaster ride of a read, though events push the boundaries of believability. In particular, I couldn’t really buy the somewhat simplistic way the massive conflict with the Ra’haam was ultimately resolved. Since that’s the primary conflict driving this entire series, that dissatisfaction was a problem for me with this concluding book.
But all in all it’s a pretty well put-together space trilogy. The plot is satisfyingly complex, especially once the time travel element is introduced. Several of the main characters have unusual backstories, enough that they’re not cardboard cutouts. They’re also a diverse crew; though most of the diversity arises from the fact that they’re from different planets, there are some characters with different sexual orientations.
If you’re looking for a fun YA science fiction series with adventure, humor and romance, I’d recommend the Aurora Cycle.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!...more
Very good, but more of a hard-hitting psychological suspense novel than a sci-fi adventure. So it'll help if you set your expectations accordingly. :)Very good, but more of a hard-hitting psychological suspense novel than a sci-fi adventure. So it'll help if you set your expectations accordingly. :) Final review, just posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
I loved The Hunger Games, thought Catching Fire was quite good if not as great as the first one, and was only so-so on Mockingjay. Also, it’s an uphill battle to write a good, enjoyable prequel if the reader already knows what’s going to happen to the main character in the later books and (spoiler) it’s highly unpleasant. So I hesitated for over a year to read Collin’s latest HUNGER GAMES book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but when I saw it on my local library’s shelf a few weeks ago I decided to give it a shot. It was surprisingly good!
It’s some sixty-four years before Katniss will enter the Hunger Games. The Capitol recently won a brutal civil war against the rebellious districts, and as part of their punishment of the districts, instituted the Hunger Games ten years ago. The Games aren’t the spectacle that they will later become; they’re more a brief, brutal battle to the death between twenty-four hapless youths, a boy and a girl from each district, who are kept in filthy cages before the Games start and fight in a dilapidated sports arena. Little attention is paid to the Games by most people, so, to try to increase the Hunger Games’ popularity with viewers, this year those in charge of the Games have assigned a high school-aged mentor to each contestant.
Teenager Coriolanus Snow is from a distinguished Capitol family that has fallen into the depths of poverty but is desperately hiding it from everyone. When he’s chosen as a mentor and is assigned the District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, he’s initially fearful that she’s one of the weakest contestants and will hurt his chances for a needed college scholarship. So while he brainstorms ways to increase the mass appeal of the Games, Coriolanus finagles his way into meeting with Lucy Gray several times before the Games start, to try to increase her (and his) popularity with viewers. More importantly, Lucy Gray turns out to be far more intelligent, talented and attractive than Coriolanus or anyone else guessed, and his attraction to her grows along with his assessment of her chances for winning the Games.
As in the main HUNGER GAMES trilogy, the action in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is melded with social commentary. Here, though, the overall story is much more deliberately paced, as it focuses on the internal thoughts and psychology of Coriolanus Snow and the people and society around him. Collins does a great job of creating a conflicted, complex character in teenage Coriolanus Snow, who’s from a distinguished Capitol family that has fallen into the depths of poverty but is desperately hiding it from everyone. This desperation informs Coriolanus’ character and choices: social, educational and financial security and the good opinion of others are so important to him, and it easily slides into self-centeredness and pride. He’s charming, intelligent and well-spoken, but ruthlessly ambitious (“Snow always lands on top!” is the family motto) and often deceptive. Still, at this point in his life there’s still good in Coriolanus, and being around Lucy Gray brings out the better part of him.
As a counterpart to the goodness and morality of Lucy Gray and Coriolanus’ classmate Sejanus, there’s Dr. Gaul, a coldblooded teacher who conducts cruel genetic experiments and creates both human and animal mutations, including neon-colored, deadly snakes, and seems to view herself as a kind of mentor to Coriolanus. The snakes and songbirds motif surfaces repeatedly, as both birds and serpents play roles in the story in both physical and symbolic ways: Lucy Gray Baird (Bird?) is a singer with a musical group called the Covey (a small group of birds); Coriolanus makes use of the recording abilities of jabberjays but is disturbed by the crossbred, unruly mockingjays; and snakes become a key element in the plot … more than once, in fact.
It’s interesting to see the differences between where the Hunger Games are at this point in time and what they become a generation later, when Katniss plays. You can see the seeds of a lot of those later changes beginning here. Many of the facets of the games in Katniss’ day, like betting on contestants and sending them food and valuable goods by drones, have their genesis here.
Extra points to the author for the depth added to this novel through her inclusion of various philosophies about human nature and warfare, which play out in the various characters’ roles and the choices Coriolanus makes. Tip: take just a few minutes to familiarize yourself a little with the competing philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, if you’re not already knowledgeable about them. Collins also explains her thinking and these philosophies in an intriguing afterword.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a book that has deeper layers to dig out and think over. It’s not always pleasant to be in the head of a future dictator, but it’s a fascinating view into the development of both his personality and the Hunger Games themselves....more
Using her 2015 Hugo award-winning short story “Cat Pictures Please” as a jumping-off point, Naomi Kritzer wrote Catfishing on CatNet, an engaging near-future YA science fiction novel about a benevolent, sentient AI and teens and young adults who are having life troubles and have found their primary emotional support in an online chat group — which happens to be moderated by the AI.
Steph is a sixteen-year-old girl who’s had an almost nomadic lifestyle for years: her mother moves them from town to town at the drop of a hat, rarely spending more than a few months in one place, and she doesn’t allow Steph to stay in contact with any friends once they’ve moved on. The reason, per her mom, is that they’re on the run from Steph’s father, who she says is violent and dangerous to them. Besides her mother, the only consistent relationships in Steph’s life are her group of online friends on “CatNet,” who are by and large all queer, nerdy and quirky. Steph’s mother, it need hardly be said, is unaware of Steph’s secret group of online friends, but they’re the one constant in her life that Steph refuses to give up.
Upon moving to their latest town in Wisconsin, though, Steph finds a new meatspace friend, Rachel, the first serious real-life friend she’s had in some time. With a great deal of help from a skilled hacker in the CatNet “clowder,” Steph and Rachel manage to reprogram a classroom sex ed robot to give “real answers” rather than the cautious “discuss that with your parents” messages that it has been giving to any touchy questions, like those about homosexuality or birth control. The results are both frank and hilarious, at least to most of the class and readers, but it sets off a domino effect, drawing attention from the media and potentially giving Steph’s location away to her long-absent father. Is he truly evil or has he been maligned? And what’s the deal with that one person who always seems to be awake and posting on CatNet, and knows more about Steph than she thinks they should?
The AI and Steph alternate in narrating the chapters of Catfishing on CatNet, with occasional chapters consisting of transcripts of online discussions of the CatNet clowder. Those interludes with the clowder were some of my favorite chapters. Their chats are realistic and frequently very funny, and you begin to recognize and become familiar with most of the key players in the clowder through their online voices.
The AI character (who I’ll refrain from naming since it isn’t disclosed for several chapters which clowder member they are) never quite felt like a true artificial intelligence to me; it’s just so very informally chatty, personable and human-sounding in its thought processes. It combines sophisticated cyber-surveillance, skilled hacking and using smart devices to intervene in others’ lives with a desire for true friendship and a naïve eagerness to help … along with an abiding fondness for cat pictures and videos. However, that’s clearly part of Kritzer’s point here: a self-aware artificial intelligence is as much a person as any human, and people of all types and genders are equally worthy of acceptance and respect.
Catfishing on CatNet is filled with charm and humor, which help to lighten the heaviness of the serious social issues and life problems that it addresses. Those problems include the difficulties of a transient life, troubles fitting in with society, abuse, and cyberstalking. There’s also a lot of fairly heavy messaging about candid sex education, queerness and sexual and gender identities, which may be either a bug or a feature depending on the reader’s own personal views.
Catfishing on CatNet won the 2020 Lodestar and Edgar Awards for Best Young Adult Book, and was nominated for other awards. It ends on an open note, setting up the sequel, Chaos on CatNet, which is due to be published in April 2021. I’m planning on reading it....more
Jay Kristoff’s latest novel TRUEL1F3 wraps up his YA dystopian LIFELIKE trilogy with a lo3.25 stars. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Jay Kristoff’s latest novel TRUEL1F3 wraps up his YA dystopian LIFELIKE trilogy with a long buildup to an epic battle, set in a nuclear-blasted future version of the “Yousay.” Some humans have (presumably due to radiation-induced mutations) developed superpowers and are often treated as deviants by normal humans; most of our main characters, like Lemon Fresh (named after the detergent box she was found abandoned in as a baby) are in this group. Intelligent robots are everywhere and are bound by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics … other than a rebel group of advanced “Lifelike” robots, who were treated years ago with a Libertas virus that reprograms them without the Three Laws.
Several of the Lifelikes have been destroyed over the course of the series, but the remaining ones, led by the mentally unstable Gabriel, are determined to set all robots free and, by the way, use that new freedom to annihilate humanity. One of the Lifelikes, Ezekiel, is determined to thwart their plan to wipe out humans, and is doing his best to convince some of the other Lifelikes, particularly his one-time love interest Eve, to switch sides. Meanwhile two mega-corporations — Daedelus, based on cybernetics and high technology, and BioMaas, based on biotech, genetic modification and cloning, but both equally oppressive — are gearing up for a battle to overthrow the other and take control over the entire country.
TRUEL1F3 begins immediately after the end of the second book, DEV1AT3. Lemon Fresh has been taken captive by BioMaas, which wants to use her superpower to destroy the technology of Daedelus. For its part, Daedelus has taken Eve and Gabriel prisoner, and is experimenting with Eve in an effort to unlock the multi-layered security vault that hides the Veritas virus and other trade secret technology. After narrowly averting a nuclear missile attack, the remaining main characters — Ezekiel, the loyal robot Cricket, the Lifelike robot Faith who’s nursing an unrequited love for Gabriel, and several “deviates” that Lemon had befriended — regroup at their not-so-hidden hiding place, a former missile silo, and determine to rescue their friends from Daedalus and BioMaas.
The LIFELIKE trilogy is an action-packed, hard-hitting SF series aimed at older teens and young adults. There are some painful deaths and a good deal of blood and gore along the way, but in standard YA novel style, hope and love prevail in the end. Lemon Fresh has grown from Eve’s sidekick to a strong character in her own right, a damsel who’s determined to rescue herself and burn down the tower, rather than wait for the handsome prince to liberate her. Eve, on the other hand, remains to all appearances firmly on the side of Gabriel and the robots, committed to wiping out all of humanity, and she has the body-count to back it up. It’s difficult to sympathize with her at this point.
The endless made-up slang and jargon can get tiresome, and I think the whole series dragged on for a little too long. Though I was engaged with the characters for most of the series and determined to see how it would all wind up, by the time of the great climactic battle at the end of TRUEL1F3 I was starting to skim.
Overall, though, Kristoff has created a pleasingly complex dystopian world with engaging characters and some intriguing philosophical questions about the nature of humanity and the importance of choices. TRUEL1F3 is a fitting end to the series. I’d recommend it to younger (but not too young, or squeamish) readers who enjoy post-apocalyptic science fiction.
I received a free review copy of this ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!...more
Really fun YA SF series - but watch out for the killer cliffhanger at the end of this book. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Aurora BuReally fun YA SF series - but watch out for the killer cliffhanger at the end of this book. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Aurora Burning, the second book in Amie Kaufman’s and Jay Kristoff’s young adult SF AURORA CYCLE series, follows the tension-filled, nonstop space adventures of the teenage crew of Squad 312, recent graduates of the Aurora Academy. In the first book, Aurora Rising, the crew visited the forbidden planet of Octavia III and discovered, to their horror, that an alien hivemind, called the Ra’haam, has taken over the planet and is bent, Borg-like, on assimilating all intelligent life in the galaxy (or, perhaps, more like the group consciousness alien in Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” aka “Green Patches”). In fact, the Ra’haam have already infiltrated the command of the Global Intelligence Agency.
Now the six remaining members of the Longbow’s crew are regrouping after losing one of their members to the Ra’haam and barely escaping Octavia III. As Tyler and Scarlett Jones try to sell their Longbow in a lawless space station, they see a media broadcast blaming their crew for a massacre of thousands of people. Instantly the crew is on the run again, trying to evade both the local crime gangs and the infected GIA agents who are trying to recapture Auri, their crewmate who has been gifted with some supernatural powers by another race of aliens who fought the Ra’haam long ago … powers that she hasn’t learned to control at all yet.
Life for Tyler and his crew only gets more exciting — in a not-so-stupendous way — when the sister of Kai (another crew member) tracks him down to insist that Kai rejoin their ultra-violent Syldrathi Warbreed Cabal. You know, the group responsible for blowing up the Syldrathi planet’s sun and killing ten billion of their people, led by the man called Starslayer. But the members of Squad 312 are determined to save the galaxy from the Ra’haam threat, even if the galaxy is being uncooperative.
Aurora Burning is a jet-propelled space adventure for young adult readers, as Tyler, Scarlett, Auri, Kai, Finian and Zila scramble from one crisis to the next. In the process, Auri finds out more about her powers as the Trigger who has the ability to stop the Ra’haam threat, her boyfriend Kai finds that it’s not so easy to escape his past as part of a Syldrathi Warbreed family, and Tyler gets up close and personal with Kai’s hardcore sister Saedii and her monstrous drakkan, a dragon-like beast that has all the odds in its favor when Tyler is forced into a death match with it. There are also some unexpectedly poignant flashbacks to Zila’s past, clarifying why she works so hard to suppress all her feelings.
In most ways, I liked Aurora Burning even better than Aurora Rising. The snarky humor is still present, but balanced by deeper emotions and insights into the pasts and the motivations of the crew. The plot felt a lot more cohesive and original, and there are a few fantastic twists of the kind I like: unexpected but consistent with the overall plot. And I was completely enthralled by some mysterious gifts that the crew receives from some secret helpers — bizarre but helpful gifts that seem to indicate that someone, somewhere, is either time-traveling or foreseeing their future. It’s a fascinating plot element and I can’t wait to get the full explanation for it.
On the flip side, I was never all that convinced by Auri’s and Kai’s romance, though it plays a central role in the plot, or by the crew’s overreaction (in my opinion) to a surprising and highly negative fact that surfaces very late in the story. I simply couldn’t believe that they would all react the way they did. And son of a biscuit (Auri’s favorite expression), Aurora Burning might just have the worst cliffhanger in the entire history of the universe. Kaufman and Kristoff must have worked really hard to come up with a cliffhanger of that scope and magnitude. It’s almost impressive, if I didn’t find it so vexing.
With or without maddening cliffhangers, I’m still definitely on board for book three of the AURORA CYCLE. It’s a fun, action-packed series and the books are quick reads that are hard to put down.
Thanks to the publisher for the NetGalley ARC!...more
4.5 stars for Brandon Sanderson's latest novel, which is on sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
“A hero doesn’t choose her trials.”
Spe4.5 stars for Brandon Sanderson's latest novel, which is on sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
“A hero doesn’t choose her trials.”
Spensa can’t help but hear her Gran-Gran’s voice saying these words to her every time Spensa balks at a new trouble in her life. And Spensa — a magnet for trouble — has plenty of occasions to remember these words.
In Starsight, the sequel to Brandon Sanderson’s young adult science fiction novel Skyward, the few humans who remain have been trapped on the barren planet of Detritus for several decades, with alien guardians who frequently attack the human colony with their fighter spaceships, preventing them from leaving Detritus. Spensa is a hot-headed young fighter pilot who revels in the space battles with the alien Krell, and lately she’s been pushing the envelope in those battles, in the hope that getting herself into deadly danger will trigger her latent cytonic ability, allowing her to hyperjump or teleport herself and her ship through space … and possibly open up a way for the humans to escape Detritus.
Thanks in part to Spensa’s ability to “hear” the aliens’ remote commands, the humans have been able to push the boundaries of the battle out farther from the planet itself. So when a small single alien spaceship of unknown design appears by their space defense platforms, Spensa is sent to intercept it. She finds the ship is already damaged and its pilot is injured. Before the pilot sinks into a coma, she gives Spensa a warning, combined with a plea to go to a huge deep-space station called Starsight. This may be the opportunity the humans have been looking for to steal the aliens’ hyperdrive technology, but the risks are as immense as the potential rewards.
I liked Skyward, but I think Starsight is a more unique and engaging novel. Starsight took a sharp turn in a new direction early on, and Sanderson throws in several game-changer developments throughout the novel, keeping both Spensa and the reader on their toes. It wasn’t at all the sequel I expected, and I enjoyed it all the more because of that. Spensa’s horizons and the worldbuilding in this universe both expand exponentially. Starsight is not just a place, it’s also a description of the visions Spensa sees when she’s in the nowhere of hyperspace: stars that are also eyes, focusing their malevolent view on Spensa. Those hate-filled eyes turn out to be significant to both the past and present events.
Spensa is slowly learning to curb her more reckless impulses and play better with others … well, at least some of the time. If I have a complaint about this novel, it’s that Spensa’s inner thoughts, and the frequent dogmatic declarations she makes to herself about the evils of certain alien individuals and their society, telegraph fairly clearly that Spensa is going to be slapped with a reason to re-examine her internal presumptions and prejudices. Still, I found these perspective changes truly touching when they occurred.
This theme of self-examination and personal identity is reflected in several different characters, particularly M-Bot, Spensa’s AI companion that drives her spaceship. M-Bot is still funny in that annoying way, but he’s also an artificial intelligence having an existential crisis, which adds an interesting flavor to the story. Even the surprisingly delightful Doomslug turns out to be far important than she first appeared.
There are a few interludes in between chapters, featuring some familiar secondary characters, that begin as fairly simple fleshing out of their characters and the world of Detritus, but end in a significant discovery that will almost certainly play a key role in the next book in the SKYWARD series. Between that and the rather cliffhangerish ending of Starsight, I’m searching for a way to teleport myself into the future and get a copy of the next book in this series now rather than in 2021!
Prior comments: If you liked Skyward, I think Starsight is even better! So many gamechangers here, and they’re just so much fun. I have to say the blurb for this is about the most non-informative blurb I've ever seen (it basically just recaps the first book) ... but there are Reasons for that, and I want to honor that by not giving away too much about the plot. But Doomslug turns out to be important, which warms my cold tired heart. M-Bot is a key player as well, and still funny in that annoying way, but he's also an AI having an existential crisis, which added an interesting flavor to the story. And Spensa finds out that you can't just rely on your initial impressions of individuals and their societies, and also that prejudices - both against or in favor of someone - can lead you astray.
Thanks so much to Penguin Random House for sending me the ARC!
Initial post: I just opened a package with the hardback ARC of this book!! I love it when the books sent to me that I didn't request are actually things I really want to read. And this immediately solves my "what to read next" question. :)...more
In a brutal, blasted country called the Yousay (USA, of course), hostile androids contenOn sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
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In a brutal, blasted country called the Yousay (USA, of course), hostile androids contend against regular humans and superpowered mutants against a backdrop of robot death matches, in a dystopian Mad Max type of world. DEV1AT3 is the sequel to Lifel1k3, which should be read first. Obligatory warning: This review ― not to mention a helpful four-page glossary that author Jay Kristoff provides at the very beginning of DEV1AT3 ― contains a few major spoilers for LIFEL1K3. (Those spoilers are also in the blurb for this book. So.)
Eve has spent her entire life thinking she was human, until discovering at the end of LIFEL1K3 that she’s an extremely realistic android, called a Lifelike, indistinguishable from humans except for their extreme strength, speed and self-healing powers. Deeply bitter about all the lies she’s been told, Eve has joined five of the six remaining Lifelikes in the search for Ana Monrovia, the daughter of their founder who was injured and hidden away in suspended animation. Ana is the key to unlocking some old Monrovia technology, including the information needed create more Lifelikes and a nanovirus that erases the Three Laws (protect yourself, obey humans and, most importantly, don’t kill humans) from a robot’s core code. The Lifelikes already have this Libertas virus, but are intent on obtaining it and spreading it to all of robotdom.
Meanwhile, Eve’s former best friend, human fifteen-year-old Lemon Fresh, has been hiding a “deviate” mental superpower all her life: the ability to overload electronics and burn them out. Lemon and the one remaining Lifelike who is friendly to humans, Ezekiel, are on the run, hiding from the agents of two powerful feuding megacorporations searching for the person who has this power and can turn the tide of the war between them. Lemon gets separated from Ezekiel and winds up with a group of humans who may just be her type of people. But the megacorps’ agents are still hunting for her, along with the ruthless members of a religious cult whose goal is to kill all mutants or deviates, like Lemon. Ezekiel is trying to beat Eve’s group to find Ana, in the company of a companion who will be a surprise (possibly welcome; but maybe not) to readers of LIFEL1K3. Ezekiel is hoping that Eve still has a conscience about killing people, but is that hope a vain one?
DEV1AT3 amps up the suspense from LIFEL1K3, and benefits from a more coherent plot. The characters are both colorful and memorable, and the stakes are high: humanity itself is at risk. There are a couple of robot deathmatches to liven up the plot along the way, starring Cricket, Eve’s formerly small robot companion whose brain has been put into a 77-ton WarBot. It’s a previously longed-for but uncomfortable change for Cricket, as he finds himself at the mercy of others’ agendas. Another entertaining character is Solomon, a humorously cynical robot who’s figured out a way to finesse the Three Laws and gain for himself some more personal freedom.
The theme of love and loyalty for friends and found family is strong here, particularly in Lemon. Her loyalty to friends (even the robotic ones) is laudable, even though it leads her to make some highly questionable decisions. Another character whose actions I sometimes found difficult to believe was Eve. Her character transplant lends itself well to the plot of DEV1AT3, and is perhaps even necessary to drive the plot, but didn’t entirely ring true to me.
Anti-religious views seem to bubble under the surface of DEV1AT3. Traditionally religious characters are inevitably fanatical or twisted or both, and when a new friend shares a copy of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species with Lemon, she reacts with a spiritual fervor to its message, tears in her eyes and all. It’s the Good Book for deviates!
Other than these quibbles, I enjoyed DEV1AT3 a lot. There are some great plot twists that truly caught me by surprise, and it kept me engaged from beginning to end. I’d recommend this LIFELIKE trilogy to readers who enjoy dystopian YA science fiction. I’m definitely planning to read the next and final book in this series.
Content notes: Lots of dystopian and sometimes disturbing violence (like (view spoiler)[people with mutations/deviations being crucified by a violent cult (hide spoiler)]).
I received a hardback copy from the publisher, not to mention a NetGalley ebook. Thanks!...more
The NYXIA TRIAD YA SF trilogy is complete now that this third volume has been published. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Nyxia Uprising is The NYXIA TRIAD YA SF trilogy is complete now that this third volume has been published. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Nyxia Uprising is the fast-paced conclusion to Scott Reintgen’s NYXIA TRIAD YA sci-fi trilogy, an adventure with several teenage protagonists. It’s set both in space and on a distant planet called Eden that has two moons, an alien race called the Imago, and an abundant supply of nyxia, a malleable mineral with near-magical powers. These three books tell a single, unified story, and it’s impossible to appreciate this series without reading all of the books in order … and here is your obligatory spoiler warning for the earlier volumes, as I’ll briefly recap the tale thus far.
The first volume, Nyxia, had a Hunger Games-in-space type of plot (though the competition between the teens is less … murderous, it’s still pretty intense). A powerful corporation called Babel assembled a group of ten teenagers of various nationalities but generally less-privileged backgrounds for a space flight to Eden to mine the priceless nyxia for Babel, promising them immense wealth for a few years of their lives in Babel’s service. Most of the story is narrated by Emmett Atwater, an African-American teen from Detroit. The year-long flight to Eden is spent in an exciting (for both the teens and the reader) and exhausting (for the teens) competition between the teenagers for a coveted place with the final group that will actually land on Eden.
The second book, Nyxia Unleashed, shifted to the teens’ exploration of Eden (better known as Magnia, the Imago name for their planet) and getting to know the Imago, the human-like inhabitants of Magnia, as their group travels toward and into the planet’s largest city. It becomes even more clear to Emmett, his love interest Morning Rodriguez, and the other teenagers just how untrustworthy Babel is. But it turns out the Imago have been keeping a huge secret as well: the two moons of Magnia are going to collide in a few weeks, and the planet will become unlivable.
As Nyxia Uprising begins, it’s now a race against time and Babel’s military forces, to try to get Earthborn teenagers and a representative group of the Imago ― who will be the sole survivors of their entire race ― up into space to try to commandeer the Babel spaceships that are in orbit around Magnia, and travel back to Earth. Since the Imago aren’t a spacefaring race, getting up to the spaceships is more challenging than it might seem. The Imago and Earth teens also need to be prepared to fight Babel’s leaders and their marine forces for access to and control of the ships. But the Imago have nyxia, limitless imagination, and desperation on their side. Not to mention some extremely bright and well-trained (thanks for that at least, Babel) human teenagers.
Babel’s been not only cheating and lying to the human teens and the Imago, but also attempting to murder everyone on the planet, so it’s all fair. But Babel’s not going to give up easily.
Both of the earlier books in this series were exciting and engaging reads, if noticeably light on the science aspect of science fiction (for reasons I delve into in my review of Nyxia Unleashed). The teenage protagonists are an appealing and highly diverse group, and the novels (especially the first and this third one) are briskly paced, with hardly a moment for the teens and the readers to relax and take a deep breath or two. But I couldn’t help but feel that the series lost some of its sharpness and creativity in this last book. It’s focused on a single mission: get to the spaceships, take over, get back to Earth. Despite multiple obstacles and a few surprising casualties along the way, Nyxia Uprising overall felt rather predictable. The denouement was also a minor let-down, as Reintgen wrapped up the story with some feel-good giftwrap and a nice bow that took a few too many chapters to unfold.
Despite some weaknesses in this concluding volume, overall the NYXIA TRIAD series is a fun read that kept me interested to the end. I’d recommend it mostly to older teen readers who like sci-fi adventures with a diverse cast.
Content notes: Lots of violence and death. Bodies everywhere!
Initial comments: We started off in the first volume, Nyxia, with a Hunger Games in space kind of plot (though the competition between the teens is less ... murderous, it's still pretty intense).
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The second book, Nyxia Unleashed, shifted to exploring an alien planet, getting to know the Imago, the human-like people who live there ... and fighting against Babel, the evil corporation from Earth that brought the teens to this planet.
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The two moons are important: they're going to collide in a few weeks, and the planet will become unlivable. So now it's a race to try to get our group of teens and a representative group of the Imago - who will be the sole survivors of their entire race - up into space to try to commandeer the Babel spaceships, to save as many of them as possible.
$1.99 Kindle sale for this first book in a new YA SF series, May 14, 2020. The focus is on adventure + snark. The second book (which I'm currently rea$1.99 Kindle sale for this first book in a new YA SF series, May 14, 2020. The focus is on adventure + snark. The second book (which I'm currently reading) just went on sale this month.
A lot of YA fantasy and science fiction works follow teenager characters as they attend magic or spaceflight school (I would take either!), but not nearly as many follow the characters’ lives after graduation. Aurora Rising, a new YA space adventure from Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, the authors of the well-regarded ILLUMINAE FILES trilogy, take the latter approach, following a diverse cast of older teens as they graduate from Aurora Academy in the year 2380, are divided into crews of six according to their specialties, and assigned their initial mission for the Aurora Legion.
Tyler Jones, age 18, is at the top of the senior class. A natural leader and stellar student, he’s earned the right to four of the top five picks in the next day’s Draft, where the “Alphas” or team leaders pick the five graduating students, each with a different specialty, who will be their crew. But Tyler can’t sleep the night before the Draft, so he takes off on a solo space flight into the Fold, the weird interdimensional part of space that allows interstellar space travel. Tyler’s about to head back to Aurora when he receives an SOS call from a legendary space ship, the Hadfield, which was lost over 200 years ago.
Tyler (barely) manages to rescue the single survivor of the Hadfield, a cryogenically frozen girl named Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley. (Luckily she goes by Auri, sparing us from an overdose of Auroras.) But rescuing Auri takes too long and Tyler misses the all-important Draft. So his new crew is the rejects and misfits of the graduating class … except not all. Tyler’s twin sister Scarlett (a diplomat) and their lifelong friend Cat (an ace pilot), who were able to hold out from being drafted by other Alphas so they could be on Tyler’s crew, excel at their specialties. Joining them are Zila, a dark brown-skinned sociopathic scientist; Finian, their resentful alien tech who wears an exosuit to compensate for his physical disabilities; and Kal, their alien combat specialist who has a genetic predisposition to violent anger.
Tyler’s crew, Squad 312, takes off on their first mission, but their routine supply run quickly turns odd when they discover Auri stowed away on their Longbow spaceship, and then dangerous as the mission goes south and deadly forces close in. Soon Squad 312 is on the run from their enemies while trying to solve an ancient mystery that may have galactic consequences.
Aurora Rising is a fast-paced space opera adventure, overflowing with thrills and chills, and spiced up with romantic tensions between the various crew members and lots of snarky dialogue.
“But I do know you and I swore an oath when we joined the Legion. To help the helpless. To defend the defenseless. And even though the ―”
“Um, sir?” Finian de Seel says. “We might have a problem.”
“You mean aside from you interrupting my speech?” Tyler Jones asks. “Because I’d been practicing it in my head for an hour and it was gonna be great.”
There are fun if slightly juvenile details that help make the story more memorable for readers, like the color coding for the various specialties at Aurora Academy, the decorative and informative sidebars that bolster the worldbuilding, and the sarcastic voice of Auri’s “uniglass” (a handheld computer device):
“I’m top-of-the-line, new-gen uniglass technology, available nowhere outside the academy,” it shoots back. “I’m seventeen times smarter than him. And three times better-looking.”
Tyler’s crew is divided equally between men and women and includes some sexual diversity (one of the crew is bisexual) as well as racial diversity … not to mention a couple of aliens. The constant shift in point of view with each chapter can get a little dizzying; all seven of the crew members (including stowaway Auri) have multiple chapters from their POVs. Some of the characters are more memorable than others, but a few weeks after reading this I still clearly remember most of the crew members, a tribute to Kaufman and Kristoff’s success in creating distinct characters.
It’s convenient that the half of Tyler’s crew who were considered “the dregs” of their class doesn’t actually include anyone stupid or incompetent. They’re social outcasts with significant personality issues (which has the side benefit of adding interest to the story), but they’re all bright and talented at their specialties. Also suspiciously convenient is the fact that spaceship crews need to be under age 25 to withstand the mental pressures of entering the Fold, but at least there’s a plausible reason given for these youthful crews.
The basic plot elements of Aurora Rising ― a mismatched company of strangers trying to overcome their differences and become unified, an improbable heist (complete with a MacGuffin), and a journey to a destination that turns out to be far more perilous than expected ― will be familiar to anyone who reads a lot of sci-fi, but Kaufman and Kristoff sucked me right in and I couldn’t put this book down. Aurora Rising is a fun, quick read if you like your YA SF with lots of snarky banter. It’s almost guaranteed to appeal older teenagers who enjoy science fiction. It’s the first book in the new AURORA CYCLE series (thankfully its ending doesn’t leave you with TOO much of a cliffhanger). I’m definitely on board for the next book!
I received a free review copy from the publisher and NetGalley. Thanks!...more
3.5 stars for this sequel to Binti and the middle novella in the BINTI trilogy. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Binti is a gifted 17 year ol3.5 stars for this sequel to Binti and the middle novella in the BINTI trilogy. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Binti is a gifted 17 year old member of the isolated African Himba tribe who has rebelled against family pressure and expectations and sneaked off to attend the galactic Oomza University on another planet in the first book, Binti ... where she found far more adventure, tragedy, stress and personal change than she ever imagined. This theme of personal growth and change continues here in Binti: Home.
Home follows Binti as she leaves the university for a period to return to her home on Earth, with her Meduse friend Okwu accompanying her. Trouble awaits them there, not just from Binti’s choice to attend Oomza University rather than accept the role her family intended for her, but from Okwu’s presence. The Meduse have a long history of war with the Khoush people, and though there is currently a tentative peace treaty, Okwu’s being in their territory has inflamed emotions. Meanwhile, Binti is also having issues with her ongoing PTSD and with new revelations about her life and ancestry.
Binti is amazing and complex, with mixed motivations and emotions that she doesn’t always understand. She felt real to me, though her continual emotional outbursts and PTSD did get tiresome to read about after a while. But it was delightful learning more about her tribe’s culture, including the Himba women’s practice of covering their skin and hair with otjize, a red clay mixture ― a practice Binti follows with dedication, even when she is lightyears away from her home.
At the same time, Okorafor takes on multiple social issues like cultural insensitivity, finding connections with those who are different, and standing up for yourself against social pressure. The Himba are looked down on by the Khoush, the Arab (per Okorafor) people who are the majority, and the Himba in turn look down on the Desert People, or Zinariya, who are actually far more advanced than anyone outside of their tribe realizes. Binti's visit to the Zinariya, what she learns and what happens to her there, are the crux of this story.
Warning: this ends on a serious cliffhanger, one of the worst I've come across. Just consider Home as the first half of a two-part adventure for Binti, and don't pick this one up unless you have the third novella, The Night Masquerade, in hand! And really you need to have read the first novella before this one, so just plan on investing time in the whole trilogy. It's a quick read, though! And worthwhile if you like YA SF.
This just-published sequel to Nyxia is a fun YA SF adventure! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
(Recap of Book 1 in this paragraph; I've triedThis just-published sequel to Nyxia is a fun YA SF adventure! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
(Recap of Book 1 in this paragraph; I've tried not to be too spoilery) Emmett Atwater, a sixteen-year-old African American from Detroit, has spent the last year on board a spaceship owned by Babel Communications, lured in ― along with nineteen other disadvantaged teenagers from across the globe ― by Babel’s offer of immense wealth if he will travel to Eden and mine as much of the priceless mineral nyxia as possible on behalf of Babel for a year or so. Then he and the others can return home to a life of permanent ease. But Emmett and the other teenagers soon learn that the executives of Babel care only for their own power and wealth. During the year-long flight of the Genesis to Eden, the teens were pitted against each other in desperate competition for a place with the final group that would actually land on Eden. Manipulated by Babel, the competition became more and more ugly and deadly, until a final terrible twist just before the final group was dispatched to Eden in individual landing pods.
Nyxia Unleashed, the second book in Scott Reintgen’s NYXIA TRIAD series, picks up right where Nyxia left off, with Emmett soaring through the atmosphere of Eden and landing alone at night on an unfamiliar planet with two moons, and with no one else anywhere in sight. Emmett eventually is able to connect with a few of the other teens, and they make their cautious way cross-country to a supply center, where they meet up with the other teens from their spaceship, as well as a young corporal who’s been left in charge of Babel’s supply center (one of the Adamites’ demands is that the only humans allowed to stay on their planet must be children or teens). And they meet some representatives of the Adamites, who greet them with slightly unnerving good cheer. Soon the Genesis teens discover that, like Babel, the Adamites ― who actually call themselves the Imago ― have not been entirely forthcoming about their motives and plans.
I’ve always understood Babel’s reasons. More money, more nyxia, more power. That makes all the sense in the world, but I never thought about what the Adamites got out of the deal. It always seemed like we were an entertaining sideshow. A permission granted to Babel so the Adamites could witness a miracle they’ve lost. For the first time, it feels like more than that. Thesis and the others are looking at us like we’ve come to save them. I file it away under D for Dig Deeper.
The teens haven’t trusted Babel for many months, but are the Imago going to be any better? And how will the teens ever be able to get back home to Earth?
Nyxia Unleashed shifts away from the life-and-death game competition that marked Nyxia, which I think was a wise move by Reintgen. The focus shifts now to the Genesis teens’ efforts to learn to trust each other again after the many months of often bitter and deadly competition on board Babel’s spaceship while it was flying to Eden (called “Magnia” by the Imago), and to their exploration of Magnia and the Imago people and their culture.
Nyxia Unleashed is an interesting, solid follow-up to Nyxia, with some unexpected twists to spice up the plot. Each faction has hidden plans that shed new light on the entire book. The planet Magnia and its natives have some creative aspects to them, though they could have been much more fundamentally alien for my money. The Imago are described more like an unusual country of humans than a world of non-human aliens, with much that is familiar about their culture and society. Conveniently, humans and Imago are able to not only talk to each other (thanks to one of nyxia’s odd properties) but also breathe the same atmosphere and eat the same foods. But I doubt the intended YA audience will mind that, and it does act as a mirror for how we as a human society often behave.
I’ve grown quite attached to the main character and narrator, Emmett, who tries to balance his justifiably vengeful thoughts against Babel and its executives with the desire, instilled by his loving family, to be a good person and find a better way. The racially, religiously, and sexually diverse group of teens that form the Genesis group can’t all be distinct and three-dimensional personalities, but enough of them are that their interactions and relationships feel realistic. There’s a clever but poignant moment where one of the teens uses an ancient, rather obscure Biblical story as inspiration for an unexpected change in direction.
Nyxia Unleashed has a bit of a cliffhanger ending, but not enough to put me off in any way. I’m definitely on board for the third book, Nyxia Uprising, slated for publication in April 2019.
I received a free copy of this ebook from the publisher and NetGalley for review. Thank you!...more
3.5 stars (more if you love YA SF with a good side of romance). On sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Jay Kristoff’s YA post-apocalyp3.5 stars (more if you love YA SF with a good side of romance). On sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Jay Kristoff’s YA post-apocalyptic novel LIFEL1K3 stars seventeen-year-old Eve as its tough, fauxhawk-sporting protagonist. Eve is a gifted mechanic who lives with her grandfather, her only relative, in a post-apocalyptic island version of “Kalifornya” called the Dregs. She has a cybernetic eye and a memory drive (“Memdrive”) implanted in the side of her head, with silicon chips behind her ear that give her fragmentary memories of her childhood and supply her with other useful life skills. Eve’s secret pastime ― at least it’s secret from Grandpa ― is engaging in robot deathmatches to fund Grandpa’s anticancer meds. Eve’s besties are a feisty redhead named Lemon Fresh, whose name comes from the box in which she was found abandoned as an infant, a cranky little robot named Cricket who has major self-image issues related to his short height, and a loyal cyborg dog, or “blitzhund,” named Kaiser who is internally armed with a powerful suicide bomb.
Eve’s latest robot gladiator battle goes badly: not only does her robot, Miss Combobulaton, get reduced to a useless heap of parts, but at the end of the battle Eve manifested a psychic power that completely shorted out the robot she was fighting. Now several factions are out to capture or kill Eve, including the dreaded Brotherhood that kills all mutants as a tenet of its faith, a stunningly powerful and physically augmented bounty hunter called Preacher, and the local greedy and bloodthirsty gang.
On the way home from her ill-fated robot battle, Eve and her friends see an aircraft crash land in a junk heap of old auto wrecks. They pull the remains of a handsome android, an illegal “Lifelike,” from the pilot’s seat. At Eve’s and Grandpa’s home, the android, Ezekiel, unexpectedly comes back to life. Ezekiel seems to recognize Grandpa and Eve, though he calls her by a different name, but can she trust him? Maybe she’ll be able to figure it out while they’re on the run …
Kristoff originally pitched LIFEL1K3 as “Romeo and Juliet meets Mad Max meets X-Men, with a little bit of Bladerunner cheering from the sidelines.” LIFEL1K3 is a cheerfully violent pastiche of those iconic works and more. There’s a Terminator type of character, an unstoppable bounty hunter cosplaying an Old West preacher. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics play a vital role in the plot. Pinocchio is also expressly referenced several times by the characters, just in case any reader might have otherwise missed the allusion.
It may be derivative, but there’s creativity and enthusiasm in the pages of LIFEL1K3 as well. As our main characters quickly move from place to place, the pace moves swiftly as well. Robot battles and other armed conflicts are interspersed with the developing relationship between Eve and Ezekiel. The human (and android) drama element of the story is also heightened by flashback scenes of a mass murder that plays out at the beginning of the first several chapters, and by Eve’s gradual gain of knowledge about her past. Sometimes Eve overreacts to the new facts about her past; though she’s a volatile character, it seemed (especially at the end) artificially included for the sake of the plot and increased drama. I couldn’t quite believe and accept some of the characters’ actions and reactions at a few key points. The villains in this tale are also a bit cartoonish, with motivations that are understandable but rather simplistic and single-minded.
The romance, though it’s central to the plot of LIFEL1K3, never really took fire for me, perhaps partly because it involves sex (though not explicitly related) between a fifteen year old girl and an android. Despite the unusual and star-crossed partners, the romance itself remains firmly mired in standard YA romance land. More powerful for me was the depth and loyalty of the friendship between Eve and Lemon.
The cyberpunk-infused post-apocalyptic setting is, even if inspired by other novels and movies, well-imagined, with many gritty, vivid details that add to the realistic feel. Also adding to the pleasure of reading this novel were the twists and turns in the plot. Kristoff deftly threaded the needle here with twists that were surprising but had enough foundation in the previous events of the story that they didn’t come completely out of left field. My only quibble was with the very end of LIFEL1K3, which added one additional and rather unlikely twist of the knife to a cliffhanger ending. We’ll have to wait for the publication of the as-yet-unnamed sequel to see how it plays out, and I’m definitely on board for that.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!
Content notes: lots of violence and some sexual content (non-explicit)....more
Earth has become “a dark and dangerous place” in the 23rd century, a ruined world, and so one group of people has built a floating civilization high in the air above Earth, which they call New Earth. Life is definitely easier there for the privileged, but ― for reasons that are never fully explained in this story ― everyone has a small chip in their elbow, called the Intercept, that tracks whenever they are feeling strong emotions.
When Violet, the 15 year old main character, is handed a rock from Mars with mysterious markings on it, given to her by a desperate woman on the run, she calls her group of friends together to try to figure out what the markings mean … both their literal meaning as well as their import for New Earth. This group of teenagers, together with the improbably brilliant 7 year old sister of one of the gang, bands together to outwit adults and, perhaps, save the world? Or possibly they’re making a huge mistake. (But probably not, since teenagers are invariably smarter than adults in these fictional YA scenarios.)
“The Tablet of Scaptur” has some imaginative moments, but is also highly implausible, and relies on timeworn tropes like the genius child (who solves puzzles overnight that take trained adults months) and teenagers who save the day. This short story is a lead-in to Julia Keller’s new YA novel from Tor, The Dark Intercept. “The Tablet of Scaptur” is semi-standalone; the overarching plotline is not in any way resolved. But as an introduction to this world to help readers decide whether the novel is going to interest them, I’d say this story does the job....more
Light Years (2017), film producer Emily Ziff Griffin’s debut YA novel, explores a New York2.5 stars. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Light Years (2017), film producer Emily Ziff Griffin’s debut YA novel, explores a New York teenager’s coming of age and spiritual and emotional awakening in a world rapidly descending into chaos because of a deadly pandemic. Luisa Ochoa-Jones is an unusually bright 17 year old software coder, on the short list of finalists competing for a coveted fellowship offered by a brilliant tech entrepreneur, Thomas Bell. In her face-to-face meeting with Bell, Luisa demonstrates her prized software program LightYears, which scans the Internet for people’s emotional reactions to a video, news story or other content. But she’s concerned that she and her program haven’t sufficiently impressed Bell. Before the fellowship decision is announced, however, society begins to unravel as a flu-type illness descends. Accelerated Respiratory and Neurodegenerative Syndrome, or ARNS, strikes swiftly and unpredictably and is almost invariably fatal, leaving devastation in its wake.
Light Years has an edgy YA beginning, with copious swearing, underage partying by privileged New York City teens (viewed with combined disdain and envy by Luisa, who sees herself as on the outskirts of their social group because she’s odd and not particularly wealthy), and Luisa’s bitter complaints about her absent yet controlling mother and her anguish about the boy she has a crush on, who’s been sending her mixed signals. As the terrifying ARNS pandemic takes hold, killing friends and family members, Light Years shifts gears to a road trip story, as Luisa decides to head across the country to Los Angeles in search of a man that she believes may be the key to finding a cure for ARNS. I found this part of the novel the most enjoyable, as Luisa, her brother Ben, her love interest Kamal, and their friend Phoebe make their way across the U.S., encountering individuals and groups who have reacted to the epidemic in different ways.
**The next couple of paragraphs discuss the ending in general terms and are mildly spoilerish**
Light Years then unexpectedly veers to a mystical ending that seems to be an amalgam of New Age and eastern spiritualism, combined with a hefty dose of surrealism. It made little sense to me on either an intellectual or emotional/spiritual level. I even read the last fifty or sixty pages of the book twice, hoping for more insight or connection, but didn’t find it any more satisfactory the second time around. The mysterious ending also leaves not just a few plot threads, but really the entire resolution of the plot, wide open. Perhaps Luisa’s metaphysical breakthrough is intended as the final answer. It simply didn’t resonate with me, but other readers may find it more profound and meaningful.
Luisa has a synesthesia type of condition, in which her senses combine, but in her particular case this condition is triggered by strong emotions (“Blue always tastes like chocolate when I’m nervous”). This unnamed medical condition, as well as Luisa’s part-Hispanic and Kamal’s British Muslim heritage, add some diversity to the story. Unfortunately, other than his unusual culture, Kamal is a flat and uninteresting love interest with little personality. So their romantic moment, when it finally arrived, failed to move me.
Still, there is some engaging story-telling, and a thoughtful examination of loss and grief, in between the woo-woo parts. Luisa’s first person, present tense narration gives a sense of urgency and immediacy to her experiences and feelings. Teenage readers may sympathize with her fraught relationships with her parents, her desire to be independent and live life on her own terms, and her struggles to come to terms with the illness and deaths of people she loves.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review. Thanks!
Content note: Lots of F-bombs. This one is for older teens who aren't fazed by that. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone under 16, for general content reasons as well as language....more
Dragon and Thief blends dragons and space opera in an exciting middle grade science fictional adventFinal review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Dragon and Thief blends dragons and space opera in an exciting middle grade science fictional adventure. The dragon in the title is Draycos, a warrior-poet of an alien species called the K’da, who are able to shift from a three-dimensional being to a two-dimensional tattoo that attaches to your skin, moving around your body at will. The K’da are also a symbiont species, requiring a host to attach themselves to at least every six hours, or they fade away and die. In return, they offer their host protection and companionship.
The K’da have been linked with the humanoid Shontine people for years, but recently both have been under attack from a vicious people called the Valahgua, who are doing their best to exterminate the K’da and the Shontine and gain control over their part of space. Fleeing the Valahgua and their powerful weapon of mass destruction, the Death, the K’da and Shontine are seeking to colonize an empty planet when they run into an enemy ambush. Draycos’ ship crashes on the planet Iota Klestis, where he is the sole survivor … but not for long, if he can’t find a new host.
Enter Jack Morgan, the 14-year-old thief ― or, more accurately, reformed thief, since his Uncle Virgil, a lifelong con man and Jack’s sole family member, died and Jack decided to go straight. Before his death, Uncle Virge uploaded his personality into their shipboard computer, where his voice keeps Jack company and helps him to avoid being forced into foster care. Despite his reformed ways, Jack has been falsely accused of theft by a megacorporation, and he is temporarily hiding out on Iota Klestis while he and Uncle Virge try to figure out who has framed Jack and what they should do next. When Jack sees the wreck of Draycos’ spaceship and goes to explore it, Draycos literally leaps at the chance to adopt him as a new host. The two of them have a lot to get used to with their drastically different ways of life, but perhaps they can help each other with their respective problems.
Dragon and Thief is a fast-paced adventure, moving from spaceship to planet to spaceport and back to spaceships, with dangerous villains stalking our heroes while they try to evade capture and resolve their troubles. Jack is an enjoyable main character, quick-thinking and courageous, and Uncle Virge’s cynical virtual personality provides some humorous relief as well as adding to the tension of the story. The real star of the book, however, is clearly Draycos. Young readers will be enchanted with this fierce but noble warrior who shifts into a flat gold-and-red tattoo, and Jack and Draycos figure out some creative uses for Draycos’ unusual abilities during the course of their adventures.
Dragon and Thief is a quick read at less than 250 pages. I especially recommend it for younger teen boys, but anyone who enjoys YA space adventures is likely to appreciate this book. Even though the main character is a 14-year-old boy, Timothy Zahn writes with enough complexity to engage older readers, while keeping the plot and language clear enough that younger readers won’t get lost. While Dragon and Thief doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, not all of Jack’s and Draycos’ problems are resolved by the end of this volume, and enthusiastic readers will want to check out the remaining five books in this DRAGONBACK series.
Dragon and Thief is a 2003 book that was recently reissued in trade paperback. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review. Thanks!...more
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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