Posts Tagged ‘adventure’
I met author Tom Doyle years ago at a science fiction convention, and I was lucky enough to stay in touch with him afterwards. He’s the author of the American Craftsman trilogy, and his short fiction and non-fiction essays have appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Perihelion, Paradox Magazine, Kasma SF Magazine, and elsewhere.
Many years ago, when Doyle was at Clarion, he wrote a short story which was later sold to Strange Horizons. And now, he’s expanded that short story into a full length novel! You can learn more about Tom Doyle and his work at his website TomDoyleAuthor.com or by following him on twitter or facebook.
Doyle’s newest full length novel, Border Crosser, (Amazon link) available Oct 1 tells the story of Eris, who is smart, sexy, and can’t remember her loyalties. She has a type of purposeful amnesia – because she can not remember her loyalties, nothing shows up on the “emotional scanners”, allowing her to infiltrate anywhere she needs to go, or chooses to go. Able to trick the scanners, she’s the perfect undercover secret agent.
Eris’s employers are quite sure that her emotional amnesia means she won’t survive long enough to learn about her past. Maybe they shouldn’t underestimate her!
Doyle let me pick his brain about how emotional amnesia could benefit someone, how Eris handles her mental health condition, his favorite scenes to write in Border Crosser, his writing process, his band, and more!
Little Red Reviewer: Congrats on your new novel, Border Crosser! Is this novel connected to your short story “Crossing Borders” which was published at Strange Horizons?
Tom Doyle: Thanks! Yes, “Crossing Borders,” my science fiction tale of Eris, a border personality secret agent causing interstellar chaos in the far-future, was the kernel for this novel. That story was my first pro sale. I wrote the story during the emotionally most intense part of the Clarion Workshop, and I think it shows.
LRR: When I read the description for the book, I was intrigued by Eris’s “emotional amnesia”, and how her memory issues allow her to get past emotional scanners. Scanners at the border that detect your long-term intentions? That’s wild! I’ve got to know more about how these scanners work, how to get around them, and how you came up with this idea!
TD: The idea for border scanners emerged from choosing to write about a borderline personality character. Emotional amnesia is a common aspect of borderline personality disorder (BPD). This means that someone has difficulty remembering how they felt before about events, things, and people. Eris’s emotional amnesia has been amplified by her secret employers, who want her loyalties to be extremely flexible.
In the original short story, I didn’t give Eris a particular skill set that fully explained the label “border crosser” – it was more a statement about personality type. But the novel required something more. So I thought more about situations in which emotional amnesia could be an advantage and came up with the border scanner.
The border scanner is a minimally intrusive look at intentions (this future has good reasons to fear anything more intrusive). Such scans are standard when crossing one of the many far-future borders; for example, boarding a starship or landing on another inhabited world. It’s the equivalent of our airport security or passport control and customs.
The person administering the scan asks some standard questions, like “Do you intend any harm toward me, the government, the planet, etc.?” A person without Eris’s version of emotional amnesia would be caught by the mental scanner. But Eris’s mind has been conditioned to idle in an emotionally neutral setting during such scans. At those moments, she doesn’t intend harm, though she may want to get closer to certain people.
LRR: Tell us some interesting things about Eris. What makes her a compelling character?
Start with the Empress of Mars!
Posted on: April 23, 2020
Good news everybody!
Good news everybody!
If you’ve been seeing my posts and thinking to yourself “jeez, when is she gonna shut up about this Company series, I don’t even know where to freakin’ start with these damn books”, you can start with The Empress of Mars!
ok, so I KNOW all the suggested reading orders put Empress of Mars near the end of the series, but you should read it near the beginning!!!
– It functions perfectly as a stand alone. Never read a Kage Baker before? start with Empress of Mars!
– omg it is HILARIOUS, like Anvil of the World hilarious. the bad translator scene? I was laughing so hard I drooled on myself.
– If you recognize some characters from elsewhere in the series, that’s ok, and if you don’t, that’s ok too. the book isn’t about those people anyway.
Also? It’s kinda better if you read The Empress of Mars before you know about some end of series stuff that happens. I wish I’d read it before I knew all that other stuff.
The Empress of Mars is a gift that gives twice – it was originally a novella, AND then it got expanded into a novel! I’ve not read the novella, so I don’t know what parts of the book it was.
What the heck is this book about?
Mary Griffith went to Mars for adventure! She went For Science!
And when the British Arean Company decided they didn’t her discoveries anymore, they fired her. With no income, she had no way to purchase tickets home for her family. So Mary opened a bar. The very first bar on Mars, as a matter of fact. A friendly stop for ice haulers, a save haven for a Heretic, a place where everyone ends up. Mary’s bar, The Empress of Mars, is where you go for news and gossip, local brew and decent food. And when it’s literally the only bar in town . . .
(I really did want Brick and the Heretic to have a happy ever after, didn’t you?)
The Empress of Mars has electronic bees, crazy truckers, idiot bureaucrats, kind fiancees, gamblers and con-artists, two gentlemen who you just might recognize, tips for starting a business on Mars, and one very large, very perfect diamond. It’s and old fashioned western frontier town adventure story, on Mars.
It’s a fun feel good book and a fast read.
I wish I’d read it earlier in the series.
The only crime the Empress of Mars ever committed was being read immediately after I read The Sons of Heaven, and really any book would have been a let down after reading that.
Also? now I’m reading the next book (the last novel? I think?) in the series, Not Less Than Gods. It’s all about Edward, who I still think is a total asshole for all the shit he pulled in the Sons of Heaven. I am not excited about reading a book that is entirely about him.
What can I say about Not Less than Gods, since I’m about 100 pages in? The writing is glorious, the side-characters are a hoot, I love the cover art. Edward is an asshole.
Confession! I did not read any Witcher books until after I watched the Netflix show, and the major reason I got into the TV show was, um, Henry Cavill is super hot. Yes, I am super shallow, and my response to my shallowness becoming public knowledge is: IDGAF.
The video games and the first two books has been floating around the house for a while, my husband would play the game and my commentary was 100% about Geralt’s hairstyle.
So we watch the Netflix show, and I become obsessed with it. If this has happened to you as well, I highly recommend @incwitcher on twitter, for the kindest most welcoming fandom on the interwebs.
We had the first two Witcher books on our bookshelves, and I decided to give them a try.
Spoilers:
Were they different from the TV show? Yes, very much so.
Were they good? Oh my sweet summer child, these two books are the most fun I’ve had in ages! Snark, dry humor, adventure, good conversations, people who think they can escape the consequences of their terrible decisions (surprise! You can’t!), all my favorite things! Apparently I really, really love world building through dialog? Who knew. Reading them made me want to watch the TV show again, so I did.
Why have I only read the first two books, why haven’t I continued on in the series? Simply put, binge reading a series is totally not my thing. Also, we haven’t picked up the others yet.
The first book, The Last Wish, is all episodic short stories, many of which have a “monster of the week” feel to them. There is a framing device which worked well for me, but other readers have been turned off by it. I am wondering if these short stories originally appeared in magazines or other anthologies, and they were “fixed up” into a novel by way of a framing device. There’s no table of contents or anything, this isn’t presented as a collection – it is designed to be read as a novel.
The gist of a lot of the stories is that yes, yes, we know Geralt’s job is to literally kill monsters. But who is actually the monster here? I recently read the original Frankenstein, so my brain was thrilled to get more of these kinds of conversations! I’m a sucker for the “monster” who is a person who was broken by their own community, sometimes their own family.
It certainly helped that the first couple short stories involve mythology and fairy tale retellings, which I am also a sucker for.
Someone on twitter, I wish I could remember who, said something about how whatever they were reading wasn’t grimdark, it was grimm – dark, grimm as in, in these fairy tales the kids die at the end, the witch wins, there isn’t a happy ending, it is dirty and dangerous and dark AF. That describes The Last Wish pretty well, and I just really liked that description of liking dark fiction, but fiction that isn’t “grimdark”.
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
Posted on: March 17, 2019
Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee
Published in January of 2019
where I got it: purchased new
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About half way through Raven Stratagem, I realized I wanted to read everything Yoon Ha Lee had written. The Machineries of Empire series only has three books, and I needed more of this kind of writing, of this style of story weaving. So, I ordered myself a copy of Conservation of Shadows, and bought a copy of Lee’s middle grade book Dragon Pearl.
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Dragon Pearl was very cute, and it is definitely book aimed towards the 8 to 10 years old crowd. My niece justs turned six, I can’t wait for her to be old enough to read this. I hope this is the book that has her asking her parents a million questions about how the world works, why adults do the things they do, if she can be a fox spirit when she grows up, and how terra-forming works.
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When Min’s older brother Jun joined the Space Forces, his family hoped he’d return home to a better world. When Min’s mother receives word that Jun abandoned his post to seek the Dragon Pearl, the family is shocked. Min knows her brother would never do something like this. She knows what he was looking for, out there in the deepness of space, and she knows why it would tempt him so much. But his letters home make no sense, she knows something is very wrong! Knowing that she can’t let anyone outside her immediate family know that she is a fox spirit who can shapeshift, she leaves home (a little Binti like, actually!), in search of her brother’s ship and his last known where abouts.
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Dragon Pearl is very fast paced, and in short order Min loses her possessions, is embarrassed to learn exactly why her family doesn’t want their children ever using their fox-spirit magic such as shapeshifting and Charm in public, escapes the gravity well of her impoverished planet, gains a ghost, and ends up having to shape shift to imitate a dead boy who was posted on the same ship as her brother. Speaking of not using her Charm magic in public, I got an absolute kick out of the scenes in the casino.
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What started out as “find out what happened to my brother” has now turned into avoid the scary tiger captain, keep a ghost happy, quickly learn how to be a fifteen year old male cadet, somehow gain access to the planet of the dead (literally. It’s covered in ghosts and when you go there they kill you) and most importantly, don’t get stuck in this physical form forever! Some members of her brother’s ship were on a secret mission to find the Dragon Pearl, and if Min can understand what happened, her dusty, unfinished planet could become a paradise. It sounds very convoluted, doesn’t it? Luckily, Lee is a fantastic writer, so while it is fast paced, it isn’t convoluted at all.
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Read the rest of this entry »
The Queen Underneath, by Stacey Filak
Release Date: May 8th 2018
Where I got it: Received review copy from the author (Thanks!)
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You know, I never expected to laugh that much at a brothel scene. Quite the happy surprise!
When Gemma’s adoptive mother and mentor Melnora dies, Gemma will become Queen of the Under. When Prince Tollan’s father dies, Tollan will become King of Above. Neither Gemma nor Tollan are ready to lose their parents, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?
A sort-of retelling of Sleeping Beauty, The Queen Underneath showcases fully developed characters who leap off the page, snarky dialog, vibrant world building, tons of show don’t tell, and inspiring adult relationships. Some really great sex scenes, too!
In author Stacey Filak’s debut novel, Gemma is the heir apparent of the Underworld, the world of thieves and prostitutes, of daytime drinking, picking locks, and freedom. Gemma has everything she could ever want – the earned respect of her followers, best friends in the right places, and she’s just waiting for the right time to tell her lover Devery that she’s pregnant. Until Melnora took sick, Gemma was on her way to having it all.
Tollan is the crown prince of Above. He thinks he understands what “doing the right thing” means, and he prefers to stay blissfully ignorant of his family’s history and the true powers of the mage women who live at the castle. Things were going halfway decent for him until his father took ill and Tollan was accused of murder by his own brother.
With the Queen of Under and the King of Above on death’s door, it’s up to Gemma and Tollan to figure out what’s going on, and who wants all the royals dead. Well, mostly up to Gemma, since Tollan doesn’t have much experience outside the palace. With the townspeople under a magic sleeping spell, and thorns erupting out of the ground, Gemma doesn’t even yet know who her enemy is, let alone how to stop the civil war on her doorstep. The plot does start out fairly simple, and with every chapter complexities and subtleties are revealed, drawing the reader in further and further. Tightly plotted, buckets of fun, and sexy as hell, The Queen Underneath is an compelling story of of adventure, family bonds, political intrigue, wit, and revenge. And if you don’t finish this book loving Elam, I don’t know if we can be friends anymore.
hi All!
I’m doing something a little bit different for my blog tour stop. I’ve been getting a lot of questions from bloggers, reviewers, and parents who are in the tour about the reading order of these books. Questions like – what all books are in which series? Isn’t one of these series finished, and the other one isn’t? Does my child (or me!) have to read these in order? Do we have to read the first series first and the second series second?
The easy answers are:
Danica’s six book Overworld Adventure series is complete. She is currently writing the spin off series, which is called the Overworld Heroes series, the first book, Adventure Against the Endermen, will be available in early November. You don’t have to read the first series first and the second series second. In fact, you could probably start with any book in any series, and enjoy a nice family friendly adventure that your kids are sure to love.
You can learn more about Danica Davidson and her many children’s novels at her website DanicaDavidson.com, or follow her on twitter at @DanicaDavidson. To see a list of blog participating in this blog tour, click here.
Here’s the cover art for Danica’s Minecrafter novels, with a little bit about each book:
THE OVERWORLD ADVENTURE SERIES:
Escape from the Overworld (book 1, published January 2015)
Stevie is in for a big surprise while building his treehouse: he’s first attacked by a creeper, and then must take on a group of zombies! The near miss has him feeling like the worst mob fighter in Minecraft, so when he finds a portal into a brand-new world, he’s willing to take his chances.
He steps out of a computer screen and into the room of a sixth-grade girl Maison, who’s a talented builder. Stevie is shocked by how different this world is, and Maison takes him under her wing. But soon the two friends learn zombies have also made their way out of the portal!
More and more creatures are slipping out by the second, wreaking havoc on a world that has no idea how to handle zombies, creepers, giant spiders, and the like. Stevie and Maison must put their heads together and use their combined talents in order to push the zombies back into Minecraft, where they belong. As Stevie and Maison’s worlds become more combined, their adventure becomes intense and even more frightening than they could have ever imagined.
Attack on the Overworld (book 2, published October 2015)
Stevie and Maison have a great friendship where they travel back and forth between the Overworld and the human world. Maison has earned some fame for battling off the mobs at her school, but the attention has also brought about cyberbullies DestinyIsChoice123 and TheVampireDragon555, who have hacked her computer and discovered the portal! Now, through complex coding, the cyberbullies have turned the Overworld into eternal night and unleashed a pack of zombies, allowing their griefing to reach a whole new level.
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The Rise of Herobrine (book 3, published April 2016)
Stevie has been having repeated nightmares about the mysterious figure known as “Herobrine.” Some say Herobrine is an old ghost story. Some say he’s a virus. But no one believes he is real…except maybe Stevie, whose nightmares are telling him that Herobrine is going to take over the Overworld.
His cousin Alex has come to visit, and during one of her explorations, she finds a music disc that predicts the destruction of the Overworld! Are Stevie’s nightmares and the music disc connected? Stevie and Alex hook up with Stevie’s best friend Maison, and the three quickly begin looking for answers.
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- In: Kage Baker | kidlit | middle grade
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The Hotel Under the Sand, by Kage Baker
Published in 2009
Where I got it: purchased used
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I love Kage Baker’s books. She wrote the Company series, a handful of humorous fantasy novels, and a bucket of short stories, all with her signature brand of humor, wit, and pull-you-right-in writing style. Her career was cut short when she passed away from cancer in 2010. Her books have become hard to find, so every time I am in a used bookstore I head right to the “B” section and buy everything they have of hers that I don’t already own.
The Hotel Under the Sand was published by Tachyon in 2009, and is her only known work for children and middle grade readers. This novella has a similar feel to Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, except it is all around happier and sunnier.
Young Emma has survived a shipwreck and washed up onto a beach. As she is exploring the island, she meets a ghost named Winston. He is the Bell Hop Captain of the famous Grand Wenlocke hotel, and might young Emma have any luggage he can carry for her, or shoes he can shine? You see, decades ago, a wealthy man by the last name of Wenlocke started work on a massive resort on these famous sand Dunes. Adding to the allure and magic of the resort, this would be a resort where time stands still. Thanks to a time engine in the basement, guests are encouraged to stay as long as they please! Months, years! When they leave to go back home, only 2 weeks will have passed. Perhaps the project was doomed from the start, as just before the hotel was due to open a huge storm came and swept it under the sands, taking Winston with it.
The Gate to Futures Past (Reunification #2) by Julie Czerneda
published in Sept 2016
where I got it: rec’d review copy from the publisher (Thanks DAW!)
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The Gate to Futures Past is a tricky book to review, because not only is this the middle book of the Reunification trilogy, it is the penultimate book in Czerneda’s long running Clan Chronicles series. I actually read this book last summer when it came out, but I didn’t have time to review it. What better time for a review, than when the next book is about to come out? I also have the benefit of having already read the final book in the series, so I am cheating more than a little bit. With the final book in this series releasing in just a few months, readers new to this series will have an opportunity no one else has ever had – you’ll be able to read all three Reunification books, This Gulf of Time and Stars, The Gate to Futures Past, and To Guard Against the Dark, one right after the other. That’s to your advantage, as these last three books do read as one long novel. Click here to read my spoilery review of This Gulf of Time and Stars. And by the way, both This Gulf of Time and Stars and The Gate to Futures Past are now available in mass market paperback.
Did you cringe when you read that phrase “long running series”? I know some of you did! Yes, the Clan Chronicles is a space opera epic that spans three trilogies. If you’ve read any of Robin Hobb’s interconnected trilogies, you know you can jump in at any Book 1, and do just fine. I’m sure there are readers and fans who will disagree with me, but I believe the same is true for Czerneda’s Clan Chronicles series – so long as you jump in at any Book 1, you’ll be ok, with the added bonus that if you enjoy what you read, you can then start again at any other book 1! It’s neat, because if you and your friend each start at a different point, you’ll have a different timeline and a different perspective of the entire story.
I preamble with all of that so you’ll be understanding that this review will involve references to events that occurred outside this novel, that there will be unavoidable minor spoilers. It’s all to the greater good though – if you enjoy space opera with healthy dose of romance, family drama, cosmic mystery, humor, and aliens that work, anything Julie Czerneda writes is for you!
“Aliens that work”, that’s a weird phrase. You ever read a book with aliens and think to yourself these are just humans with blue skin, or elephants that talk and think just like a human? A biologist by trade, Czerneda’s aliens act differently than humans because they have biological evolutionary histories completely different from anything that evolved on Earth. They have different physiologies, different brain patterns, different reasons for doing what they do and how they do it. If you want to write aliens that aren’t humans in disguise, quit watching Star Trek and start reading Czerneda. (Actually, keep watching Star Trek. I keep hoping Huido will show up in an episode of DS9 or Voyager)
Unbreakable, by Will McIntosh
Posted on: July 12, 2017
Unbreakable by Will McIntosh
published June 27th, 2017
where I got it: received ARC from the author
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Celia makes it look easy, but she’s been training so long to break records that to her, all the training has begun to feel hum-drum. She figured out the trick to conditioning her body years ago: all she has to do is suffer, and the hardest part of breaking a record is the unceasing boredom. Most minutes holding your breath under water, longest time being buried alive, most number of hours spent without sleeping, she’s done it all and she knows it’s 99% sitting around waiting.
She’s lived in Record City for as long as she can remember, and for nearly as long she’s lived with her adoptive parents and a few house mates. They eat together, train together, cheer each other on, and help each other recover. When the team breaks a challenging record, it’s cash rewards all around and better housing. Losing out to another team means having to move to a dingier apartment with fewer windows. It might sound weird to you and I, but to Celia this is what family and love and friendship means. When you’re surrounded by people who live their lives the same way you do, there isn’t anything to tell you that this is all very weird.
Part Hunger Games, part Lost, and part other things I can’t mention because I don’t want to wreck the twist, Will McIntosh’s new novel Unbreakable will grab you by the neck and won’t let go. Longer than a novella, but shorter than a novel, McIntosh self published this very strange, ultra fast-paced, narrowly focused, and addictively readable novel. It is currently available as an e-book or paperback on Amazon.
As a friend lies dying, Celia escapes Record City on a quest to find a life saving medicine she’s heard about on television. And what she finds are . . . more walled cities full of single minded citizens who shush her every time she tries to ask questions. Even in Record City, the rule was “follow the rules sand shut up”, and the TV and movie characters who inspire Celia to be curious about the world were bound to get her into trouble eventually.
Uncharted Stars, by Andre Norton
published in 1969
where I got it: purchased used
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My favorite Andre Norton is The Zero Stone. A fun space adventure story with a scifi twist (and an alien cat!), there’s everything to love about that book. So of course I had to read the sequel, Uncharted Stars. Taking place shortly after the events of the first book, Murdoc Jern has purchased his own spaceship, now he just needs to find a pilot to fly it. Already down on his luck, Murdoc can barely come up with the docking fees for the ship, let alone money for a pilot’s salary. Even worse, any pilot he hires might just be a spy for the Patrol.
He ends up hiring Ryzk, a man with his own secrets. Why is such a talented pilot wasting away on this backwater planet willing to work for pennies? A question Murdoc files away for another day, as he is too busy ensuring Eet stays out of sight and keeping Ryzk from knowing the goal of their flight plan is to find the origins of the Zero Stone.
Eet knows a lot more about the zero stones than he’s willing to share, but he does share that the stone allows him to shapeshift at will, and that if he concentrates and practices, Murdoc can do it too. After a while, Murdoc gets half way decent at holding a different face, and tries his new found skills out on Eet, turning the critter back into a normal cat. Miffed beyond belief, Eet gives Murdoc the silent treatment, and they both realize after a while they are better off friends than enemies. But can Murdoc be trusted with the supreme power of the stone?
The plot felt very episodic, with the characters having one adventure after another. They try to sell gems on a planet, fail and leave; they visit a secret and famous pirate base, steal a star map and are able to escape; they rescue an alien archaeologist who is forever in their debt; and other various adventures and escapes. I wonder if this novel is a fix-up of Murdoc and Eet short stories? Because that is what it felt like. Not to say this is a bad novel, I was just hoping for better because I loved Zero Stone so much.
There were quite a few things I did enjoy about Uncharted Stars. It takes place in Norton’s “Forerunner” universe, which includes a whole ton of loosely related novels and short stories. If you’re familiar with any of those stories, you’ll find a ton of easter eggs in Uncharted Stars. The story also has a really adorable twist at the end, something I never saw coming but I’m happy it was there.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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