For everyone who likes my reviews, good news: I’m going to have my own review column in Orson Scott Card’s new webzine, Intergalactic Medicine Show. I’m going to be covering both books and audiobooks, and the column will appear monthly.
So, if you’re an author, publicist, or publisher, and you’d like to send me books for review in Intergalactic Medicine Show, see my Review Books page for details.
A brilliant and brutal near-future SF satire about businessmen who manage wars (backing the side who they think will earn them the most profit if victorious) and climb the corporate ladder by killing off their competition in gladiatorial car duels; reads as if it were written by Harlan Ellison channeling Chuck Palaniuk, and ranks with the best of what either of those two have written.
Grade: A+
Superb historical fantasy, set in plague-era Europe, that takes the well-trod trope of angels and demons battling for men’s souls and makes it fresh again.
Grade: A
Complex and ambitious epic fantasy with great worldbuilding and an interesting magical system; hardcore Tolkein-ites will probably love it, but it will prove too dense for other readers.
Grade: B-
Robert Jordan-clone; well-written and fast-paced, but there’s nothing here that hasn’t already been done to death.
Grade: D+
Since I’m not allowed to reprint any of my Kirkus reviews, I link to them when I can, though they’re not always available online. So, since you faithful readers of my blog might be wondering what I thought of a particular book I was reading, I thought I’d try to post a brief summary of my thoughts, a sort of one-liner along with a letter grade to give you some idea.
Two more of my Kirkus reviews are now available online:
The Ultimate Adventure by L. Ron Hubbard
Also, in other good news: I sold a review of Peeps by Scott Westerfeld to Strange Horizons. Peeps, by the way, goes on sale Thursday, August 25. It’s Peeps week!
Publisher’s
Description:
A world that exists in the shadows of our own.
A conflict we will never see.
One woman stands between those determined to control history and those who
will risk their lives for freedom.
Maya is hiding in plain sight in London. The twenty-six-year-old has
abandoned the dangerous obligations pressed upon her by her father, and chosen
instead to live a normal life. But Maya comes from a long line of people who
call themselves Harlequins–a fierce group of warriors willing to sacrifice their
lives to protect a select few known as Travelers.
Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are brothers living in Los Angeles. Since
childhood, the young men have been shaped by stories that their late father was
a Traveler, one of a small band of prophets who have vastly influenced the
course of history. Travelers are able to attain pure enlightenment, and have for
centuries ushered change into the world. Gabriel and Michael, who may have
inherited their father’s gifts, have always protected themselves by living ‘off
the Grid’–that is, invisible to the real-life surveillance networks that monitor
people in our modern society.
Summoned by her ailing father, Maya is told of the existence of the
brothers. The Corrigans are in severe danger, stalked by powerful men known as
the Tabula–ruthless mercenaries who have hunted Travelers for generations. This
group is determined to inflict order on the world by controlling it, and they
view Travelers as an intolerable threat. As Maya races to California to protect
the brothers, she is reluctantly pulled back into the cold and solitary
Harlequin existence. A colossal battle looms–one that will reveal not only the
identities of Gabriel and Michael Corrigan but also a secret history of our
time.
Moving from the back alleys of Prague to the heart of Los Angeles, from
the high deserts of Arizona to a guarded research facility in New York, The
Traveler explores a parallel world that exists alongside our own. John Twelve
Hawks�s stunningly suspenseful debut is an international publishing sensation
that marks the arrival of a major new talent.
Review:
I’d heard a lot of buzz about
The Traveler prior to picking it up, and it’s supposedly the next Big Book
from Da Vinci Code editor Jason Kaufman, so I was looking forward to it
with great interest.
I’d heard it described as "powerful," "breathtaking," and as "The Matrix
crossed with William Gibson." Alas, it isn’t any of those things.
It’s one of those books that reads as if it was written
only to be made into a movie (indeed, the movie rights have already been snapped
up by Universal with Spielberg attached to direct), and if one were to make an
accurate this crossed with that comparison, one might choose "The
Highlander crossed with Robert Ludlum," rather than the absurd analogy
quoted above. But though the book seems to have only popcorn pretensions,
the prose is sharp and clean, with vividly described action sequences, making
for a fast and easy read.
I admit my initial interest in the book came about as a
result of a discussion on the Night Shade Books message board in which people
were speculating as to the real identity of the author John Twelve Hawks (a
pseudonym). The biographical information included on the book jacket says
only that Twelve Hawks "lives off the grid." But not only is Twelve Hawks
"off the grid," he’s a complete recluse, and apparently won’t engage in any
publicity for the novel, and supposedly only communicates with his agent via a
satellite phone with a voice scrambler. I will also admit that had I known
about the satellite phone/voice scrambler thing before reading the book, I might
have lost interest in Twelve Hawks completely. And that would have been a
shame, for though this is a snack novel designed for consumption by the masses,
rather than a critical audience, it’s a fairly enjoyable one, and given the huge
marketing push the book has been getting, it’s nice to have read it just so I’ll
know what the heck everyone’s talking about.
Publisher’s Description:
Karl Schroeder is one of the new stars of hard SF. His novels, Ventus and
Permanence, have established him as a new force in the field. Now he extends his
reach into Larry Niven territory, returning to the same distant future in which
Ventus was set, but employing a broader canvas, to tell the story of Teven
Coronal, a ringworld with a huge multiplicity of human civilizations. Brilliant
but troubled Livia Kodaly is Teven’s only hope against invaders both human and
superhuman who would destroy its fragile ecologies and human diversity. Filled
with action, ideas, and intellectual energy, Lady of Mazes is the hard SF novel
of the year.
Review:
Like the last book I reviewed,
Spin,
Lady of Mazes is a novel full of big hard SF ideas, but here the
emphasis was on hard, rather than big, as in Hard to Read. When I saw
the publisher’s description, I wondered if it was so Hard to Read that the
jacket copy writer couldn’t figure out how to synopsize it (in fact, the
book jacket has some other copy, but it’s provided in the form of quotes
from Charles Stross and Charles Harness). Schroeder comes up with some
delightful futuristic, post-human scenarios, but he does it so convincingly
that at times it’s a struggle just to keep up with what’s going on since I’m
just a regular non-post-human human.
This novel is by no means entry level SF, which is
fine–not all SF is written for the novice reader (nor would I want it to
be). However, this book was chosen as part of the Tor/SCI FI Channel
cross-promotion program called "SCI
FI Essentials" (in which a science fiction novel is chosen each month to
be featured as the "Pick of the Month" and will be featured on SCIFI.com and
possibly in SCI FI Magazine),
and such a complex and difficult read would, I think, do more to turn off
new readers than bring in new ones. People who think cutting edge
science fiction can be found on the SCI FI Channel (or on TV in general)
aren’t ready for this sort of thing.
Moh’s Hardness Scale is a "a crude but practical
method of comparing hardness or scratch resistance of minerals"
(see below). I tend to categorize hard SF novels by how hard
they actually are. Ben Bova writes hard SF, but what he writes is very
accessible, entry-level type stuff. What he writes could be considered
say, gypsum hard SF. On the other end of the spectrum is
Charles Stross who writes ambitious, yet incredibly dense and challenging
SF, or diamond hard SF. This novel isn’t quite a diamond, but
comes close, as corundum hard SF.
So if you’re a hardcore SF geek, this book is sure to
entertain, though the effort of reading it might turn your brain to goo.
Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
| Mineral | Moh |
| Diamond | 10 |
| Corundum | 9 |
| Topaz | 8 |
| Quartz | 7 |
| Feldspar | 6 |
| Apatite | 5 |
| Fluorspar | 4 |
| Calcite | 3 |
| Gypsum | 2 |
| Talc | 1 |