Book Review: The Human Division

Following the events of The Last Colony, John Scalzi tells the story of the fight to maintain the unity of the human race.

The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source of military recruits. Now the CU's secrets are known to all. Other alien races have come on the scene and formed a new alliance—an alliance against the Colonial Union. And they've invited the people of Earth to join them. For a shaken and betrayed Earth, the choice isn't obvious or easy.

Against such possibilities, managing the survival of the Colonial Union won't be easy, either. It will take diplomatic finesse, political cunning...and a brilliant "B Team," centered on the resourceful Lieutenant Harry Wilson, that can be deployed to deal with the unpredictable and unexpected things the universe throws at you when you're struggling to preserve the unity of the human race.

This book is actually a collection of serial episodes that were initially released online. I didn't read them when they were released as I was taking a break from Scalzi. I'm glad that I waited for them to be bundled together as that works better for me. While each story is self-contained, strung together they apply to a larger storyline: Who is behind the effort to destroy the Colonial Union's efforts to reunite with Earth and get along with its neighbors? [Highlight to read SPOILER] Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn't in this book. [END SPOILER]

The stories are primarily about the work of the "B Team", a diplomat, her retinue, the ship's captain and crew, and their CDF technical liaison, Lt. Harry Wilson. If you read Old Man's War, he was one of John Perry's buddies. During their adventures, they discover evidence of the larger storyline, but as they try to piece together the clues or climb out of the trap about to spring on them, they always seem to be a step or two behind their adversary.

A few other stories served as background for the reader, but were always relevant to the main storyline. These tended to be darker, a juxtaposition to the B Team's typical "we've stepped in it now" attitude in the face of adversity.

I have to say that I've missed the effortless way that Scalzi can carry a story and develop characters with dialogue. Humor is a big part of that. Good-natured snarky pokes at their jobs or the situations that they're in makes them relatable and thus endearing to this reader. But there's a lot of heart as well. The main characters are good people forced to work in difficult situations with lives at stake, theirs or others. If you're in it up to your neck, there's no time for whining. You just have to do your job and hope that it all works out in the end. When the shit hit the fan in the climactic episode, I couldn't help but care about who made it out alive. And that's an important lesson for all writers, if you want people to come back and read your stories, you'd better give them some characters to root for.

4.25 stars

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Book Review: Semiosis

In this character driven novel of first contact by debut author Sue Burke, human survival hinges on a bizarre alliance.

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools.

Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape—trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.

The book is broken up into seven sections, each with a different narrator from a different generation. Roughly thirty to forty years pass between the first four. The remaining story is told over the span of a couple years. The initial gaps between sections affords the colony a chance to develop and set the stage for the major plot development hinted at early on in the story. For that reason, I didn't mind the gaps, though I regretted seeing a couple of these characters go.

The first section details the arrival of the colonists and the early days of their settlement. Octavo was the narrator, and I rooted for him to solve the colony's initial problems. They were off to a bad start: A navigation error sent them to the wrong planet, and a botched landing destroyed a good chunk of their equipment and supplies. After several deaths, he figures out that the colonists are pawns in a war between two plants. The irony is dispiriting after fleeing an Earth overwhelmed by war and environmental collapse.

But things didn't get any better in section two. Sylvia narrates how the colony leadership, now made up of the few remaining colonists from the first generation, has resorted to rape, murder, and intimidation to maintain control. Burke's colonists named their world Pax. It's another sledgehammer's worth of irony.

These two sections of the book were so bleak that, after finishing them, I had to take a break from the book. While I liked the two narrators, I wasn't too sure about the rest of the colony. When I returned to it, things looked less bleak, but I still didn't care about the colonists and the narrators varied in likeability.

By the time I finished section five I was convinced that Burke didn't like these people either. She beat the crap out of the idealistic first generation only to have them turn bitter, embracing the despotic tactics of the very people that they fled from Earth to keep dissenters and their children in line. A couple of generations later and the colonists are mostly annoying, dirty hippies. In a major encounter, Burke sets them up to fail, crushing the idealism out of the narrator and his like-minded compatriots.

The idea of sentient plants made for an intriguing premise, but I found myself with more questions than answers. The major plant character rattles off its very detailed knowledge of organic chemistry, but no explanation is offered as to how it came to acquire said knowledge. There are no plant schools, nor any surviving members of its kind to pass on this knowledge. I inhale air into my lungs, extract the oxygen molecules, push them through my alveoli into my bloodstream, extract carbon dioxide from blood vessels, and exhale that gas. Not only do I not have to consciously think about doing this, but without the education I've received, a lifetime of breathing would not impart that knowledge to me. Does the plant somehow see or taste—or whatever the botanical equivalent is here—the molecules? I could accept that if offered as an explanation. If I could see molecules, after several millenia of existence, I'm sure that even I could've performed much better in my organic chemistry class.

After finishing this, I'm left to wonder what Burke is trying to say here. Is this a friendly warning that while solving Earth's problems is hard, running away to colonize other worlds is no easier? Is she cynically saying that no matter where people go, whatever their idealistic intentions, they're going to screw things up?

To summarize, great world building but a bleak narrative with cynical messaging and very few characters worth rooting for.

2.5 stars

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Writing Has Resumed

I finally seem to have made enough progress processing my father's death that I'm able to write again. Obviously the real world events of 2020 didn't help to move things along. While terrible things are still going on, it seems that on a personal level I've been able to turn the page.

Over the summer, I was inspired by a status update I saw on Goodreads to write this short story. The idea rattled around my brain, but I wasn't able to write it up until the week after Christmas. It's titled "Staking Sunflowers". It's 2,100 words long and has sci-fi and horror elements in it.

My wife and kids read it and gave their approval. A reading group on Goodreads has given it positive reviews, too. After a few edits, including tacking on a darker ending, I've started reviewing markets that it might work for. First submission and rejection happened yesterday, so I must keep looking. In the meantime, now that it's out of my head, I can get back to working on Gateway.

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Book Review: 2113

This anthology is a collection of "short stories inspired by the music of Rush." Having been an avid fan of the band since 1982, I've listened to each studio album in their discography dozens to hundreds of times. As such, I've generated my own imagery about what the lyrics and music are saying, so I went into this book with preconceived expectations.

As the subtitle to this book is "stories inspired by the music of Rush", one should pay attention to the "inspired by" part. I didn't. I was expecting literal interpretations of the songs. Most stories head off in a direction I would never have guessed. Plenty of times my reaction was, "Really? That's where you went with this song?" Now when the song is fairly vague on specifics, focusing on a theme of feelings in a situation (like Mercedes Lackey's "Into the Night", inspired by "Freeze"), there's far more leeway to generate a story.

But sometimes the stories are built from just one line in a song. These are typically the stories that take the most liberties, riding a tangent off into the fifth dimension. Yeah, creative license; I totally get that. But it wasn't what I was looking for. It worked in "Random Access Memory" by John McFetridge, but too often these stories were just so different that they would've worked better for me without the Rush reference.

Two of the eighteen stories in this anthology were actually the inspiration for Rush songs: "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster inspired "Red Barchetta" and "Gonna Roll the Bones" by Fritz Leiber inspired "Roll the Bones." While Neil's lyrics were faithful to Foster's story, he seems to have just used Leiber's story title as its content couldn't be much further removed the song.

Now that's not to say that the stories are bad. There are plenty of good stories here, and some of them, like "Day to Day" by Dayton Ward (inspired by "Red Sector A"), are faithful to the lyrics. If one doesn't go into this collection expecting every story to be a literal interpretation of the selected songs, one will appreciate this collection all the more.

3 stars.

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Book Review: Monstress, Vol 2: The Blood

Maika Halfwolf is on the run from a coalition of forces determined to control or destroy the powerful Monstrum that lives beneath her skin. But Maika still has a mission of her own: to discover the secrets of her late mother, Moriko.

Maika has traveled to the port city of Thyria to look for clues at a one of her mother's safe houses. Upon discovering a strange bone, she goes to see Seizi, a friend of her mother's and a civilized merchant pirate. She wants passage to the Isle of Bones, a place he took her mother to years ago. After warning her of the danger, he reluctantly agrees.

Most of the rest of the volume concerns Maika's journey to the island with Kippa and Master Ren and what they encounter there. There are flashbacks to Maika's childhood, more is learned about the Shaman-Empress, and the Monstrum that lives within Maika remembers a part of his past. Overall, I'm not sure how much we learned. There seem to be more questions than answers.

Maika is not to be trifled with in this volume. It seems like her temper has turned sharper. Even Kippa isn't exactly free from it—the Monstrum certainly isn't. She lashes out at anyone who gives offence, in one instance ripping the arm off a sailor. Were it not for Kippa, acting as her conscience, one wonders how quickly Maika would give in to the Monstrum's will.

The artwork remains fantastic. So much wondrous detail and a luscious color palette. The rendering of Blood Fox alone conveyed so much emotion and sinister intent. Takeda is outstanding.

4 stars.

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Book Review: Space Eldritch

An anthology of Lovecraftican pulp space opera or as the publisher puts it: "Startling Stories meets Weird Tales."

Being an anthology, I feel it is only fair to review each story individually.

“Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest” by D.J. Butler. I didn't enjoy this one. Butler runs three storylines in different time periods that are somehow all connected because...I don't know. Everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen is happening simultaneously. Time is irrelevant? It was very disjointed. 2 stars.

“Space Opera” by Michael R. Collings. Got off to a rough start, but gradually improved and ultimately finished strong. Dark humor effectively employed. Haughty hive aliens of stupendous power colonize worlds with the offspring of their god, pre-existing life forms on said worlds irrelevant. That is, until they get to an Earth (at least, I think it was Earth) in the distant future. 3 stars.

“The Menace Under Mars” by Nathan Shumate. This is where the anthology really find its footing. Set in an alternate history where amazing ideas about physics came to fruition, humanity has started the process of terraforming Mars. Before its irrevocably lost beneath a sea, a pair of scientists set off to investigate a possible archeological site that could prove the existence of a long dead Martian race. Shumate utilizes elements of Lovecraft's style when confronting things that the mind struggles to comprehend but does so without being imitative. At one point it was so intense that my daughter unwittingly startled me when she walked silently up to me. 4.5 stars.

“Gods in Darkness” by David J. West is a pulpy, Cold War era tale complete with a chiseled chin protagonist, commies, and an elitist scientist. Although the characters were two-dimensional, the story was entertaining. Eldritch aspect was slight. 3 stars.

“The Shadows of Titan” by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen was a creepy tale about the first human expedition to Titan and what they discovered. While you know that the proverbial shit is going to hit the fan, the authors write it well and offer an ending that I didn't see coming. 4 stars.

“The Fury in the Void” by Robert J. Defendi takes place in some distant future where civilization is circling the drain. Technical knowledge is preserved by religious orders that have merged faith and science in a disappointing fashion. A Russian ship is chasing a Greek ship as the latter has committed murderous atrocities against their people. As spaceships are sacred due to their scarcity, combat is carried out through boarding actions. Think of it as the eldritch version of "Day of the Dove" episode of Star Trek. 3 stars.

One of the themes in Lovecraft's work was that there existed forbidden knowledge which was too much for human comprehension and often led to an individual's descent into madness. Another is that our scientific skills far outpace our wisdom to properly utilize their discoveries. Howard Tayler masterfully blends these themes together in “Flight of the Runewright.” In the story, a man seeks to start a new life in a colony on a new world, but to get there, he must board a strange starship engraved with mystic runes. Tayler leads the reader down a path where bad things are going to happen, but until his big reveal, the reader doesn't know just how bad they're going to go. 5 stars.

Average of the stories: 3.5 stars. Like trick-or-treating, it's a mixed bag of mostly average loot with a couple scores that make it worth the effort. Of course, YMMV.

Unfortunately, I have to add that most of the stories needed another round of proofreading. I wasn't looking to take a critical eye to this, but the typos and grammatical errors leapt out of the page at me and proved distracting.

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Book Review: Hellboy Volume 7 - The Troll Witch and Others

In this volume, we're treated to several stories from back in Hellboy's days at the BPRD. Most of these are Mignola's attempt to adapt a fable or myth into the Hellboy universe. The results vary.

"The Penanggalan" starts off this volume with Hellboy in Malaysia in 1958. It's a typical short Hellboy tale, but Mignola spoils it by giving away the ending before the confrontation with the monster begins.

"The Hydra and the Lion" is better. Mignola grabs a hold of the Greek legend of Hercules and places it in Alaska in 1961. This one plays out until the end.

"The Troll Witch" is an adaptation of a Norwegian folk tale. Hellboy is investigating a series of murders in Norway in 1963 and has come to confront an old woman about them. There's an emotional resonance that lifts up this story that one doesn't usually see in a Hellboy story. One of the best Hellboy short stories that I've read so far.

"The Vampire of Prague" is an adaptation of several local legends. Mignola wasn't able to do the artwork for this one. Not only didn't I like the story, but I didn't think the artist's style meshed with Hellboy. He made him seem too cartoonish.

In "Dr. Carp's Experiment," a BPRD team investigate a haunted house. After a bit of background in the intro, the artwork carries the rest of the story. Mignola makes full use of his color palette here and does a great job.

I'm not sure what to make of "The Ghoul." If I say anything about it, I'll give it away. I can tell you that the titular character speaks in verse. Not too sure this one works.

The collection ends with "Makoma," an adaptation of "The Story of the Hero Makoma," an African folktale perfectly suited to Hellboy. The story begins with Hellboy paying a visit to the New York City Explorers' Club whereupon he encounters a mummy who tells him the story of Makoma. At this point, Mignola hands over the artwork to Richard Corben who does a fantastic job adapting Hellboy into the Makoma saga. Not only does the penciling work, but the traditional Hellboy color palette brings Africa to life, unlike "The Third Wish" from the previous volume. A great story to end the collection.

3.5 stars overall.

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