A new review over at Tor.com:
Jemisin and Walters have written a really fun book. Fast-paced and full of action, it maintains its tension throughout. Harper is a recognisable version of the character we meet in Mass Effect: Andromeda, but one who’s more fully-fleshed-out (and shows, I think, more of a sense of humour) than the character we see there.
The cat is briefly tolerant.
NK Jemisin, THE FIFTH SEASON; Jay Posey, THREE and MORNINGSIDE FALL; Ursula K. LeGuin, THE WINDS TWELVE QUARTERS & THE COMPASS ROSE; Walter M. Miller Jr., DARK BENEDICTIONS; Patricia A. McKillip, The RIDDLE-MASTER’S GAME; John Scalzi, LOCK IN; Anne M. Pillsworth, SUMMONED; Bethesda Software, SKYRIM: THE HISTORIES; and Paul McAuley, CONFLUENCE.
The cat awakes, and disapproves.
Four here
That’s Liu Cixin’s THE DARK FOREST, trans. Joel Martinsen; Seth Dickinson’s THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT; Melinda Snodgrass’s EDGE OF REASON; and Greg van Eekhout’s DRAGON COAST, all courtesy of Tor Books in one way or another –
And four here.
– and P.N. Elrod’s THE HANGED MAN, Cathy Clamp’s FORBIDDEN, N.K. Jemisin’s THE FIFTH SEASON and Kit Reed’s WHERE, courtesy of Tor Books and Orbit Books.
Some of which I may never finish.
Zachary Jernigan, No Return. Night Shade Books, 2013.
Fifty pages in, this is a very interesting SFnal fantasy novel which is a)very much not my cup of tea, and b)has debut novel problems with line of direction and voice. I do not disrecommend it, but as for myself I may not finish it for a long time yet: I like to feel a strong pull, and I’m just not feeling any urgency here.
Started it when I was deathly sick, though. That might have something to do with it.
Stephanie Saulter, Gemsigns. JFB, 2013.
I’m twenty pages in. I have to read and review it for Strange Horizons. Already it tends towards the self-indulgent in terms of prose, a little bit too in love with saying the same thing in three different ways or the too-clever sentence or image. (I’m starting to think that JFB’s vision as an imprint and my idea of what I’d prefer to read, in terms of style – and also on occasion in terms of content, although that’s too early to say here – are strongly divergent.) On the other hand, already flashes of interesting character. I make see-saw hands.
And I have to finish it anyway.
Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise. Tor, ARC, 2013.
About sixty pages in. I love Gladstone’s debut. This would be a great book for me if I had more reason to care about the characters: it feels sufficiently like a debut novel here that I have begun to wonder if Gladstone didn’t write this one first.
ETA: Muddled the title, folks. Sorry. SERPENTS, not DEAD.
Francis Knight, Fade to Black. Orbit, 2013.
Forty pages in. I feel no connection to the main character, and without that the setting details on their own don’t really hold me. It probably doesn’t help that it has a quasi-noir voice, and I have ever found most kinds of noir predictably boring.
N.K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon. Orbit, 2012.
Fifty pages in. Setting is fascinating. Have encountered three viewpoint characters, though, and am bored by two of them. Prose is not gorgeous enough to keep me constant until the two lads start (I hope) becoming interesting. Will probably finish, eventually, but feel no particular urgency.
Karen Traviss, Halo: Glasslands. Tor, 2011.
Fifty pages in. Have appreciated Traviss’s SFnal military tie-intales before, but this novel has failed to do good characterisation on the opener, and I don’t have any investment in the Halo universe to carry me through in the absence of someone fun to hang out with. Cast of dozens: not open for newbies.
Rachel Bach, Fortune’s Pawn. Orbit, ARC, 2013.
Forty-five pages in. Tone so far is at right angles to the Military Space Opera Type Boom promised by the cover copy: not so much with the boom, lots with the lusting after pretty boys with Mysteries Attached. Tonally, reminds me a lot of Generic Urban Fantasy but In Space: the Only Girl, who is Super Competent At Killing, has Smart Mouth, and Doesn’t Have A Lot Of Friends – it’s a type, okay? And our protag is basically a Space Mercenary instantiation of the type, within Standard Deviations of Bland, which doesn’t fill me with warm fuzzy optimism about how well the rest of the novel is going to go.
I’ll probably finish it, at some point, but only to see if I’m right when I call every single move in advance.
(This makes me sad. I wanted Proper Boom with Female Protagonist. Instead forty pages of Lusting Over Pretty Cook Boy.)
Possibly I’ve begun to suffer from the Critic’s Disease. You read enough, it gets harder and harder to find stuff that stands out as appealing, because even Good Things Of Their Kind start feeling stale and predictable because you’ve read (and attempted to analyse) so many Things Of Their Kind. Only the truly excellent – or the strange and experimental – becomes capable of kicking your interest up a notch…
…And thus the critic’s tastes fall farther and farther out of step with the tastes of the Average (so-called average) Reader.
Anyway. What do you think?
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 