Posts Tagged ‘romance’
A story with no romance and friendships stronger than death is hella awesome.
A story with lots of sensuality and healthy relationships, also hella awesome.
I really can’t choose because I get so much satisfaction out of both.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let me tell you a bunch of hella awesome things about Benjanun’s Sriduangkaew’s Machine Mandate series:
- The series is all novellas and short stories
- it’s a series that all takes place in the same universe, but you can read them in any order.
- Super kick ass ladies who don’t take shit from anyone
- Queer representation
- Sriduangkaew’s prose is fucking gorgeous, and her action scenes are cinematic
- How the AI’s interact with humanity (and choose not to) is fascinating
- hard scifi + healthy adult relationships, what?
- Oh, and the sex is plasma hot
yes, yes, I know I’m behind, there is a ton of stories in this series that I haven’t read yet.
The stories all take place in the same far future world – humanity created AI’s and colonized vast sections of the galaxy. After many generations, the AI’s realized they could probably live a better life without humans, so they ditched us and created their own AI-run communities. Humans gotta human, so there’s plenty of warfare and private armies and political machinations and amazing spaceships and space stations and FTL travel, and plenty of alien creatures for us to do inhumane things to. It’s a big galaxy out there, surely there is plenty of place for people and AI’s to live and not get all up in each other’s business.
Of course everyone is all up in each other’s business. Of course the humans not-so-secretly want to get rid of all ,the AI’s and of course the AI’s are lying when they say “we just want to be left alone, we mean humans no harm”. Cue the drama, trickery, flirting, and revenge, cyborgs, and cinematic action!
The Alabaster Admiral, Admiral Anoushka, shows up in a handful of Machine Mandate stories. Sometimes characters who are up to no good will mention the Alabaster Admiral because they are desperately trying to stay off her radar, and in other stories the Admiral is one of the main characters.
- In: interviews | John Adcox
- 4 Comments
Hey, so my WordPress Editor just an hour ago spontaniously switched to the Block Editor. which means I have NO IDEA how this post is going to turn out, because everything is super weird.
I met John on Twitter a while back, and we’ve chatted back and forth a few times. He’s a fellow science fiction and fantasy fan, a writer who loves mythology, a writer who seeks out wonder.
What started off as a project between friends, for their family, has turned into something much, much more. Several years ago, John and his wife Carol started a tradition of creating a Christmas book for their friends and family, with John writing the prose, and Carol doing the illustrations. These stories are now ready to shared with everyone, and every year, starting in 2020, Story Plant will publish one of John and Carol’s books. The first one, Raven Wakes the World, hits bookstore shelves next week. (Indiebound ordering link)
A tale of an artist rediscovering her own strength, Raven Wakes the World is a magical realism with a touch of romance, and the unforgiving environs of Alaska. If you are looking for a unique holiday gift for someone who loves modern mythology, this could be it! Click here to read a free preview.
You can learn more about John and his work at his website, JohnAdcox.com, and by following him on twitter, where he is @JohnAdcox.
ok, so funny story – when I emailed John these questions, I knew the illustrator’s name was Carol, I didn’t know that was THE Carol, John’s wife! That’s what I get for not doing my research, that’s for sure!
Little Red Reviewer: Congrats on your new novella, Raven Wakes the World! What inspired you to write this book?
John Adcox: That’s hard to answer. I’ve always had a fascination with mythology, and I love stories where myth bleeds out to enchant and maybe even heal our own more mundane world. I truly do believe that stories have the power to change and heal us. Sometimes, story might be the only thing that does. Not too long ago, I heard a pastor friend define religion as communal response to a story. Why not? After all, the language of God is parable and story. I think other people’s stories might have a power to reach us in a way that our own, more familiar ones can’t. And it’s telling, I think, that so many of our most sacred stories have echoes in cultures all around the world. The inspiration, I think, was to look at Christmas, and healing or rebirth, through a different cultural lens.
LRR: Tell about this story – what’s the elevator pitch?
JA: Katie Mason is an artist wounded in the soul after the end of a broken relationship. She’s fled all the way to Alaska to heal and to make art, but she hasn’t been able to do either. She’s cocooned herself, like the world in winter. But in the town of Aurora, Alaska, she meets a mysterious stranger who wakes her passions, and who has secrets. Soon she finds herself caught in an Inuit myth made real, and in a world where winter seems to last forever. If you’d like to know more, the opening chapters are online at http://ravenwakestheworld.com/.
What was your favorite scene to write in Raven Wakes the World? Where there any scenes that were unexpectedly difficult to write?
J.A.:Wow, that’s also really hard to answer! I think my favorite scene is the one where Katie first hears the story about how Raven stole the sun, the moon, and the stars and brought light to the dark world. It’s also the scene that inspired my favorite of the illustrations. The hardest to write, I think, was the end, when Katie faces her pain and starts to make hard choices. It’s always hard to write about pain and heartbreak. Sacrifice isn’t especially easy either, especially when it is for love.
LRR: I read on your blog that you and your wife have a family tradition of creating original Christmas stories. How did the tradition get started? Has it changed over the years? What are the elements that all Christmas stories must have, to be a good holiday story?
J.A.:My friend Carol Bales — she wasn’t my beloved wife yet; we weren’t even dating back then — and I had the idea to collaborate on a book to give our friends as a Christmas gift. I’d write a story and she’d draw the illustrations. We bound those first books by hand. People seemed to really like them. Raven Wakes the World was the first of them … although this version is extensively revised and expanded. Over the following years, we tried a number of different genres, including drama, an urban legend/ghost story, action/adventure, and even screwball romantic comedy. If there’s a connection between these books (aside from the fact that they take place in winter, which is absolutely my favorite season to write) it’s has to do with people who are somehow isolated and hurting, and who find their way back to home, family, community, and joy. Christmas is about birth and rebirth, and homecoming, and that seems almost universal in so many cultures. I think all of these stories have to do with people who are broken finding a way to be less broken, sometimes through a miracle. I’m not sure that’s true of all Christmas or holiday tales, but it’s certainly true of a lot of them, from A Christmas Carol to Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Oh this book!
What started out as a cute little adventure story, turned into the most wonderful hero(ine)’s journey!!
yes, I admit, when I first started reading Gods of Jade and Shadow, I was like “this is super cool, 1920s Mexico, we’ve got a fun adventure starting, looks like there could be some cute romance happening here”. and for the first half of the book, that sorta is, what is happening. AND THEN.
Lemme tell you ALL about it!
Because reasons, Casiopea Tun has a bit of Cinderella situation going on. She and her Mom live with their extended family, but Casiopea is treated like a servant. She cooks, cleans, goes to the market, runs errands for her awful cousin (is he that awful? really? actually YES), and takes care of her angry, bitter grandfather. She dreams of a way out of this life, but can’t see one. this is starting out very fairy tale-ish, yes?
one day, when the family is on an outing, having left Caseopea at home, as a punishment, she takes special notice of an old trunk in her grandfather’s bedroom. And she opens the trunk.
What’s in the trunk? oh, only the bones and soul of Hun-Kame, Lord of Xibalba, and one of his bone shards gets lodged in Casiopea’s hand. no biggie, right? He can just, remove the shard, and then he can go back to Xibalba to dethrone his brother, and then Casiopea can pretend none of this ever happened, right?
hahahaha, NO.
Hun-Kame immediately starts his plan to return to Xibalba and dethrone his brother Vucub-Kame. But first, he must locate his missing left ear, left index finger, and left eye, so that he can be whole again. But what about that bone shard?
The bone shard is part of Hun-Kame, and so long as it remains lodged in Casiopea’s hand, she has a glint of the supernatural about her, the protection of a god. On the literal other hand, the longer it stays in her hand, the more human Hun-Kame becomes. If the shard isn’t removed in time, he will forget who he is, and she will die.
Casiopea and Hun-Kame thus leave on an adventure across Mexico, visiting demi-gods, demons, and other friends of Xibalba, so he can regain his missing body parts before time runs out.
Sounds serious, isn’t it?
Ok, so I’m sure this book wasn’t planned to be cute and adorable and funny and flirty and heartwarming, but it was all of those things. I’ll bet this book was planned to have an amazing ending that was an absolutely joy to read, and it was that too.
See, here’s the thing:
Casiopea is a good Catholic girl. She shouldn’t be alone with a man in a train compartment, especially a man she isn’t related to. She doesn’t even know this guy! But. . . Hun-Kame is not a man, he is a Lord of Xibalba. So it’s ok, right?
and Hun-Kame has no idea how to talk to mortals. he has no idea how to talk to women. He also has no idea how a train schedule works. For goodness sake, he doesn’t know what coffee is! To me, he was adorably clueless.
Watching the two of them travel across Mexico was the most adorable and heartwarming thing I’ve seen in ages. in AGES.
Who is writing this story, anyway?
Posted on: March 31, 2020
- In: Kage Baker
- 5 Comments
I’ve been re-reading Kage Baker’s Company series. I’m not writing formal reviews, just chatting about the books every few days, making small connections, making big connections. Some spoilers are unavoidable.
If you don’t care about this series, but are interested in my poor brain exploding due to realizing my beloved characters never had any free will, scroll way down to a paragraph that starts with “I used to think . . ”.
Previous posts in this series:
post 1 – talking about In the Garden of Iden (book #1)
post 2 – talking about Sky Coyote (book #2) and Mendoza in Hollywood (book #3) and also the movie Rocketman and the tv show Star Trek: Discovery
and now we’re up to talking about The Graveyard Game (book #4) and The Life of the World to Come (#5). This is where I realized my beloved characters don’t have any free will, that everyone is trapped. Here we go!
About ten minutes after I finished The Graveyard Game, I pulled The Life of the World to Come off the bookshelf. Boy these books have some truly awful cover art.
The Graveyard Game is a hella fun read, and it’s a fast read! We’re back to Lewis and Joseph, and I adore Joseph, even if he’s a jerk sometimes. Please, is there an internet archive of Joseph fan-fic? Pretty please? Anyway, Joseph is trying to find out what happened to Budu, and Lewis gets a little obsessed with trying to figure out who the hell Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax was. They are both sort of trying to figure out what happened to Mendoza. The problem is, when you’re a cyborg who is enslaved to The Company, every word you say, every photo you take with your cybernetic eyes, every web-search you do, is recorded and added to the temporal concordance. Everything you do becomes recorded history, so you have to be super sneaky, and make sure nothing you do is recorded. Because recorded history can not be changed.
Joseph finds some secret bunkers, and reminisces about his early years with the Company and Budu’s heroic acts. Lewis is haunted by his past, when he saw something he shouldn’t have.
Joseph has a hard time coming to terms with the idea that as you age, the world changes. You feel like you don’t fit in with the younger generations anymore, the things you care about aren’t the things they care about. What happens when an immortal has a mid-life crisis, and realizes that trends in Company brainwashing and programming have drastically changed over the course of known history? The Graveyard Game might be my favorite Company book! (well, tied with Sky Coyote, because that book is just so damn funny) I guess I just love any excuse to hang out with Joseph!
And then we get to The Life of the World to Come, which is the most annoying book in the history of EVER, while at the same time being the most confusing book of the series and the most important book of the series.
As of Tuesday this week, I’m telecommuting until further notice. I have a mini-desk set up in one corner of the living room, and a huge thank you to IT for sending me home with an extra plug-bar!
I’m trying to keep to my normal schedule as much as possible, I’m the kind of person who really needs structure. This means: Up at 6am or earlier, exercise, have a shower, have a coffee. . . and well, I used to leave for work around 6:40am because I had an hour commute. I used to get home from work around 6:30, because hour commute.
no more hour commute.
I’ve just bought myself 2 hours a day (or more!) to read!!! I’m trying to read in the morning, instead of obsessing over reading the news.
I’m re-reading my way through Kage Baker’s Company series, blew through In the Garden of Iden in a couple of days, and am now a few chapters in to Sky Coyote.
We picked up a few more Witcher books, so I have those two.
if you’ve just gained some time, due to #reasons, what are you taking the time to finally read?
I’d forgotten how freakin’ smart In the Garden of Iden is, now that I’ve read further into the series there is SO MUCH foreshadowing in this book that OF COURSE I wouldn’t/couldn’t have seen the first time I read it. Also? The sex scenes are SO ADORABLE!
I was nervous getting up to the scene at the end. Iif you’ve read the book, you know the scene I’m talking about. I was this close to DNFing it, and going right to Sky Coyote, so I could skip that scene, because with all that’s going on, did I really need to torture myself with reading that scene?
Mendoza managed to survive it. Baker managed to write it. I needed to put on my big girl panties and read the fucking scene. I took a deep breath, and I read it. I didn’t like it, but I got through it. The actual scene? it was shorter than I remembered. A little easier to survive than I expected. Still, it was brutal. Maybe next time, I’ll skip it.
ok, more random thoughts on this book:
(apologies in advance for crappy grammar, shouty caps, and crimes against italics. I’ve been drinking. it’s been a week, ok?)
for the uninitiated, In the Garden of Iden has time travel, romance, teen angst, grown-up snark, and immortals. It is sorta like Outlander meets Twilight, minus the werewolves and with way better writing and humor?
Shit, the title!!!! Excellent play on words on Garden of Eden. Mendoza finds herself in a paradise, and is then thrust out, having had her eyes opened to so much awfulness. And holy crap, she is SO seventeen years old!! the teen angst is so adorable! And what she knows now? the knowledge she has (about life, about mortals) she can’t unknow. I think I could play with this paragraph for about forever, so i’m just gonna shut up now.
I like that this book is written in past tense first person. At least that means we know for a fact that Mendoza doesn’t die.
srsly, what the fuck are they teaching these kids in school?
Joseph rocks. The first time I read this, I thought he was an asshole. After re-reading Iden and a few chapters into Sky Coyote I don’t think he’s an asshole at all. i mean, he’s a total jerk sometimes, but he’s not an asshole.
In the Garden of Iden came out in 1997. for context, that was the year I graduated high shool, and at the time I wouldn’t have known quality science fiction if it bit me in the ass. For folks who were actual grown-ups in the 90s, did this book “break the internet”? Were people all like “what the hell is this?”, or did this book come out, and no one knew what it was and it didn’t get any buzz? I mean, the series doesn’t really get going big time for a few books or so, but Garden of Iden is SO FREAKING GOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!! what was was the reaction when this book came out?
omfg time paradox!!! Joseph, Nef, and Mendoza were sent to Walter Iden’s estate to (among other things) collect samples of certain plants that would shortly become extinct. Some of these plants have medicinal extracts, etc. avoiding spoilers: if Joseph hadn’t given Iden __________, maybe Iden wouldn’t have ______ ____ _______ , and maybe _____ ______ would never _______ ________ in the first place??? i freaking LOVE shit like this!!!
More in a couple days when I’m further into Sky Coyote.
To Say Nothing of the Dog came out in 1998.
We all need something happy right now.
So I’m going to spoil this book for you:
It has a happy ending.
It stars the world’s cutest doggo, and the world’s fluffliest cat.
No one dies.
Yes, this is a book in which no one dies, comedies of manners take place, Victorian romances are not-quite thwarted by distractable chaperones, yard sales are born, mysteries are solved by studying other mysteries, time travel happens every five minutes, and you’ll laugh your head off.
While you can read Willis’s Oxford Time Travel books in nearly any order, since they all function as stand alones, I’d recommend reading Doomsday Book first. It’ll give you a feel for Willis’s writing style, the rules of her time travel technology, it’ll tell you what you’re getting yourself into. (and you have to read Blackout / All Clear as a duology, do NOT read All Clear first!)
Once you’ve finished Doomsday Book and you are done crying, you’ll be reading for something much lighter and much funnier. It’s time for To Say Nothing of the Dog. You’ve earned it.
In the future, Lady Shrapnell refuses to take no for an answer. She commandeers the time travel lab at Oxford to send hapless historians anywhen she pleases, so that her restoration of Coventry Cathedral can be perfect.
You can’t bring artifacts forward in time with you, but you can steal them away from a cathedral that is about to be bombed in the 1940 Blitz, hide them somewhere safe, and then 200 years later just happen to locate them in some granny’s attic. The one item the historians can’t seem to find is the Bishop’s bird stump. What is a bird stump? Doesn’t matter, it’s just a Macguffin, and a cause for comedy as time travellers to say “The Bishop’s Bird Stump” ten times fast while trying to figure out what happened to it and why anyone would want to make something so hideous.
The only way to protect the time lagged historians from Lady Shrapnell’s wrath is to get them as far away from her as possible – maybe a few hundred years away from her.
Time Was, by Ian McDonald
Posted on: July 1, 2018
Time Was, by Ian McDonald
published April 2018
where I got it: purchased new
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Stories tell us who we are, but books are the vehicle. Physical books are vehicle, medium, and method, a metaphor unto themselves, they are both particle and wave.
I’ve read Time Was by Ian McDonald twice now, both times started out exactly the same: A quick glance at cover art that communicates nothing, a quick skim of the back cover copy, a quick shrug. A few pages in an immediate annoyance with Emmett, who speaks quickly and with little context, a man who isn’t ready to let anyone in. Then I meet Tom, who I immediately feel protective over as I imagine his quiet smile and puppy-dog eyes. In the moment that Tom’s eyes meet Ben’s, I feel honored just to be in the same room with that beautiful blossoming emotion of their immediate chemistry.
When Emmett stumbles upon a battered and slim volume of poetry at the death of a local bookstore, he find a folded and faded love letter inside. Entitled “Time Was”, the book has no copyright date, no publisher information. Used bookstores lucky enough to have a copy appear to be under strict instructions to never sell the book, only to always have it on the shelf.
Emmett has grazed the edge of the mystery of Ben and Tom, two men who were forced to discover a means of communicating across time by leaving letters in specific books in specific bookstores. To sully something beautiful, a particular book was their dead drop. But it’s been decades since the war, why are the instructions still being followed to the letter?
Whoever is writing Doctor Who these days could do a lot worse than writing an episode based on Time Was.
This review is part of the #GuardAgainstTheDark blog tour! To learn more (and enter a give away!), click here.
Cover art by Matt Stawicki http://www.mattstawicki.com
To Guard Against the Dark (Reunification #3) by Julie Czerneda
publishes Oct 10th 2017
where I got it: received ARC from the publisher (Thanks DAW books!)
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Thesaurus.com has been no help whatsover. What’s that word for when a long series that you are emotionally invested in has come to a close, and while you’re sad it has ended, you’re happy because you can just pull the books off the shelf and visit the characters anytime you want? I feel certain German, or perhaps Norwegian has a word for this.
To Guard Against the Dark has been 20 years in the making. It was 1997 when Julie Czerneda published A Thousand Words for Stranger, the book that started it all. The year I graduated high school was the year her novel A Thousand Words for Stranger came out, the year the world met a species that was in danger of breeding itself out of existence. Their lives a secret, their homeworld unknown, the Clan hid in plain sight, amassing fortunes and enemies. Three trilogies and twenty years later, here we are.
Does that mean You need to read all eight books that came before this one to enjoy To Guard Against the Dark? Certainly not. This is, however, book three in this particular trilogy, so you will want to read the two preceding books. You’ll be in good company, as I came to this series myself by starting at This Gulf of Time and Stars, which is the 1st book in this trilogy. If right here, right now, is the first you have ever heard of this series, you are going to feel a little lost reading this review. It won’t help you newbies very much that there are a ton of intertwining plotlines in this climactic last novel and I am trying my hardest to avoid major spoilers. But minor spoilers? Sorry, unavoidable. Continue at your own risk.
The Emperor and the Maula, by Robert Silverberg
available Sept 30th 2017
Where I got it: received advanced review copy from the publisher (Thanks Subterranean Press!)
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Robert Silverberg’s The Emperor and The Maula is exactly what it says on the tin: this is a space opera version of the story of Scheherazade – in which a woman is sentenced to die at dawn and purchases another day of living by spinning a compelling tale for the emperor with dawn as her cue for a cliffhanger.
I love the idea of a space opera Scheherezade. Just think of how far an author could scale things up! A number of years ago, there was a scifi anime made of The Count of Monte Cristo, with aliens, and travel to other planets, alien technologies and a very cool artistic style. The writers took an earthly story and scaled it way the hell up, and it was brilliant.
What gives this wonderful little novella the “more” factor are its publishing history and the galactic scale a space opera environ allows. If you’re one of those readers who always skips introductions offered up by authors or their friends, make an exception for this one. The history of this novella as seen through the logistics of the publishing industry is an adventure itself – rife with cliffhangers, cancelled publishing projects, word count requirements, adventures in selling the same story twice, concluding with the original novella being shoved in a file and forgotten about. And now after twenty five years, Silverberg fans can finally read The Emperor and the Maula in its nearly original form. Funny, compelling, suspenseful, and given the space opera scale-up, this is exactly the kind of story an Earth woman might tell to an alien overlord on a planet far, far, away.
The Ansaaran Empire, benevolent ruling power of the known galaxy, brings culture and civilization to all planets. Races living on backward planets are known as maulas, a word that translates to “barbarian”. If these people can ever find it in themselves to become cultured, perhaps one day, hundreds of years from now, they may be welcomed into the empire as citizens.
As an Earthling, Laylah is a maula and as such is forbidden from stepping foot on the sacred homeworld of the Ansaarans. Knowing that the punishment is death, she travels far and wide, every year getting closer to her goal, and finally stepping off a starship and on to the sacred planet. Where she is summarily arrested. And then passed from one bureaucrat to another in a bureaucratic comedy of errors, as all of them know the punishment for her crime is death, but none of them want to be associated with the poor loser who will actually be responsible for someone’s execution.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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