Review: Thank You for My Service

Thank You for My Service by Mat Best
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Let's be clear. I hate Mat Best. Were it not for the wholesome existence of James Mattis, Mat would have laid destruction to the planet years ago.

In this case, he cost me 3 nights of sleep as I just couldn't put his book down.

More seriously, Mat could have written all sort of books. He could have continued his public persona. He could have told a bunch of bloody war stories. He could have made himself to be a larger than life hero.

Instead, his book tells the tale of almost everyone that has ever served in the US military. We do what we do to help the team win. We try to be better people every day. And we try to make our corner of the world a little better.

Mat just has a modestly larger corner than the rest of us.

Want to hear about the blood-n-guts of war? The book has some of that. Want to hear about harsh training? That as well. Want to hear about honest and earnest patriotism? In there. How about the challenges of leaving the service and finding a new purpose for life? That, too.

Most importantly, Mat describes how the average servicemember just wants to serve honorably and make the world a better place. And he does it while making you smile.

View all my reviews

Review: Pilgrim's Storm Brooding: A Sweeping Dark Fantasy Epic

Pilgrim's Storm Brooding: A Sweeping Dark Fantasy Epic by Damien Black
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review. That is a good description of my experience.

Damien is back at the top of his form with the third installment in this series. The plot continues as various faiths that have spent centuries in conflict now find themselves either ready to commence all-0ut war or to work together to fight off the larger impending evil.

This installment does a couple of things very well. One is that there is less focus on rape. My biggest criticism of the second installment is the blase attitude towards rape. The second is that Damien has done an excellent job of recalling past events without bogging down the current narrative progress.

This is a fun read that is worth your time....and money!!

View all my reviews

Review: For Steam And Country

For Steam And Country by Jon Del Arroz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review. It just wasn't good enough to get to 3-stars.

This is a steampunk that includes a lot of stereotypical twirling of mustaches. The steampunk aspects were presumed. The dialog wasn't bad. It just wasn't good enough to get me into the characters.

On the positive side, there weren't many grammar/spelling errors in the few chapters that I managed to choke down. The other positive is that I got the book during a time when it was free. So all I lost was some time.

View all my reviews

Review: Darkness on the Edge of Town

Darkness on the Edge of Town by Brian Keene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-Star review. That's a good description of my experience.

Residents of a town discover that a dark curtain has descended on their town. The curtain blocks out the sun, moon, and stars. No one that enters the curtain ever returns. Those that enter it can be heard screaming in agony...for a time.

Faced with living for some unknown time confined with their neighbors, the town quickly...and in my opinion a little bit inexplicably....becomes self-destructive. It is suggested that the force behind the curtain is telepathically encouraging the self-destruction. The book doesn't provide enough context for each individual to know if that force is planting an new seed of destruction or encouraging something that was already there. As a group of humans, it seems like it was something already there. But we never get to meet most of the characters before the curtain came down, so it is impossible to know how they have fundamentally changed after it came down.

This is sort of a cross between Lord of the Flies and Stephen King's Beneath the Dome. In fact, this book was published a few months after Beneath the Dome.

I was halfway through the book before I had enough interest to want to finish it. I'm a huge fan of the author's podcast and wanted to give his books a try.

There were very few reasons to have any emotion for or against any of the characters. They have little history upon which to base an emotional connection.

There isn't any real building of suspense. The dark curtain falls. Things become steadily, progressively worse. There really aren't any huge surprises once we get to the worst condition. The violence borders on being mundane because it is expected.

While I'm sure that I'll be reading more of the author's work, I have no desire to revisit this book.


View all my reviews

Some Final Thoughts on the 2019 Hugo Awards

My ballot for this year's Hugo Awards went in before the end of July.  I ended up only voting in the Novel category.  My ballot was:

1. Spinning Silver
2. Trail of Lightning
3. Record of a Spaceborn Few
4. No award
5. The Calculating Stars
6. Revenant Gun
7. Space Opera

It was really close on The Calculating Stars, but I thought she took a shortcut that undermined her larger message.

I didn't vote in any other categories for a couple of reasons.  In order:

1. My dad spent this year dying from cancer.  I was his primary support.
2. See #1
3. See #1
4. See #1
5. See #1
6. See #1
7. See #1
8. See #1
9. The narrow range of repeat nominees
10. The seemingly outsized influence of review sites/publishers

So the biggest issue was that I didn't have as much time this year to spend on reading/listening to the nominated works and then reviewing them.  That aside, there are a couple of issues that compromise my enthusiasm for the process.

I typically focus the Novel, Fancast, and Graphic Novel categories.  Depending on time, I might wander into the art and short story categories.  But those first three are the ones that I care about more than the rest.  I think I have a reasonable base of experience with works in that category and thus can offer a reasonably informed opinion regarding what might or might not be worthy of recognition.

The last couple of years have witnessed a significant narrowing in the range of works considered for nomination.

For example, four of the works in the Graphic Novel category come from properties that have nominated in past years.  Black Panther, Monstress, Paper Girls, and Saga are all repeat nominees; in some cases, multiple repeat nominees.

To be blunt, I have never been impressed with the storytelling or art associated with Saga.  I was disinterested in reading this year's nominated volume based on my underwhelming experiences in year's past.  Ironically, the guy that writes Saga also writes Paper Girls.  I think Paper Girls is generally a property that is worthy of attention.  For what it is worth, I thought Frank Cho's "Skybourne" and "Redlands" by Jordie Bellaire & Vanesa Del Rey were worth consideration.  I would put either of them above Saga.

In the Novel category, "Record of a Spaceborn Few" and "Revenant Gun" also come from series that have been nominated several times.  I am concerned that nominations of each installment in a series represent a trend that will ultimately narrow the range of works considered within the category.  All of the novels in N.K. Jemisin's "Broken Earth" series were nominated and won in the novel category. I put all three novels above "no award" on those ballots (and put at least one in first place) as those were incredibly good books.  So I'm not arguing against series-based work ever being on the novel ballot or that multiple entries in a series shouldn't be eligible in the novel category in multiple years.  I am suggesting that a portion of the nominating readers may be focused on such a narrow band of works that they might be excluding other works that are more worthy of consideration and ultimately nomination to the shortlist.

Had I read it in time for nominations this year, Mark Lawrence's "Grey Sister" would surely have been on my ballot.  I hope that the capstone of that trilogy, "Holy Sister" will be read by enough nominators that it will make next year's ballot.  Grey Sister was head and shoulders above the works that I put below "no award" this year.

In the Fancast category, the Coode Street Podcast, Fangirl Happy Hour, and Galactic Suburbia are repeat nominees.  Coode Street and Galactic Suburbia have their positive moments.  I've heard enough of Fangirl Happy Hour to know that they aren't all that impressive.  I gave a quick listen to the first episode of Be The Serpent.  It was the first episode and not bad by that standard.  I hope they've gotten better.  By comparison, all of my nominees in this category have a lengthy history of exemplary work in the genre.

I think the fact that there are so many repeat properties suggests that an unhealthy number of nominators are not looking very seriously at a broader range of titles.  Lela Buis has suggested that identity politics may be one factor that motivates a narrowing of the properties considered for nomination.  A few years ago, K. Tempest Bradford suggested the idea of not bothering to read works by straight white men for a while.

And of course, there is a habitual suggestion that self-published works are not generally worthy of larger consideration.  This year's SPFBO winner, Orconomics, is a tour-de-force that was originally published in 2014.   I would compare it favorably to The Goblin Emperor; a book that has grown on me since I read it.  Either book was better than that year's winner in my opinion.

The point is that if nominators were sampling a broader range of works, then we should see fewer repeat nominees from the series.

A related factor is that review sites may not be as broad in their coverage of the genre.  As a result, readers that look to review sites for references to quality work may not encounter quality works that are not reviewed because those authors or their publishing houses may not enjoy an appropriate "reputation" among reviewers.

One example that should be receiving more attention is Adrian Collins.  He is the editor of Grimdark Magazine and the GdM anthologies.  His work is outstanding.  Many of the included works are also worthy of wider recognition.

A second, admittedly lesser example would be Cirsova magazine.  I read issue #1 a while back.  It presented middling to decent fiction.  The works in the most recent issue were better.  It is definitely a publication that I would suggest that readers try to see if it presents works that they appreciate.  It has a bit of a retro feel to it while also leaving open the possibility of encountering works that translate that retro aesthetic into something that expands upon modern sensibilities.

Neither GdM or Cirsova appears to be on the radar of active readers that nominate for the Hugos.

While I certainly lacked time to engage with the Hugo nominees in a more substantive way this year, I also found that I had less motivation to make that effort.  The narrow range of nominations was less interesting.  With the recent unpleasantness neatly tucked out of the way, I hope that the Hugos do not suffer in the long run from a nomination field that based on an artificially limited scope of interest.

Review: Fighting to Survive

Fighting to Survive by Rhiannon Frater
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a weak 4-star review.

Fighting to Survive tells the story of a group of survivors from the prototypical zombie apocalypse. They start out living elbow to elbow in a reinforced/walled construction yard with zombies on all sides. Eventually, they expand out into the surrounding area.

The zombies are a problem. But in some ways, human politics is a larger challenge.

And in some ways, the purposeful cruelties of other humans living in the area pose the largest challenges of all.

The cast of characters includes a broad spectrum of individuals each bringing their own unique talents and perspectives to performing the myriad tasks needed to help humanity survive and hopefully to let human civilization begin to thrive.

Difficult challenges will face our merry band of survivors. Some of their solutions are not what most people would endorse. They happen anyway.

A mysterious Vigilante is in the compound occasionally tossing someone over the walls to the waiting zombies. The victim being someone that had demonstrated a purposeful lack of concern for their fellow survivors. Exactly who the Vigilante is an ongoing question.

This was a solid 4-star read right until the last 5-10 chapters. At that point, the author took a wonderfully inclusive narrative and infused it with latent racism and misandry.

A very enjoyable read. Easy to see why it was picked up from being self-published by a major publishing house. Just a couple of rough edges that could have been smoothed out with a little editorial discretion.

View all my reviews

Review: Heroing

Heroing by Dafydd ab Hugh
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is a 1-star, Dorothy Parker review. That is an accurate assessment of my experience.

Five chapters. That's all it took. And as it was a physical book, the opportunity to evaluate its aerodynamic capabilities was not to be denied. The gouge in the drywall will need to be fixed.

It appears that this is the first book written by the author. It showed.

In five chapters, there was no character development. Why was she there? Why did she want to go adventuring/fighting? What personality quirks endeared her to the reader.....or made her interestingly repellant.

Nothing.

Within the story of the book, the heroine was broke and out of work. Within the text, it is demonstrated that she isn't very good at "heroing". At least, she doesn't demonstrate any special capacity for it.

There is a bit of misogyny expressed by other characters that seems to suggest that what she lacks is an opportunity rather than lacking in the ability.

It was about that time that I found the author's statement at the back of the book. Apparently, this book was an attempt to illustrate the "patriarchy". The book accomplishes that task poorly by using a character that is ill-prepared for any opportunity that might come her way.

The primary sins of this book are that it fails to present interesting characters and places an unsubtle polemic objective before the task of telling a good story. I read several other books both immediately before and immediately after that subtly and effectively did a better job of discussing issues surrounding equality than this awful load of offal.

Heroing might have reached the rare achievement of being a book that will go in the dustbin instead of to a used book store or a Little Free Library.

View all my reviews

The Biological Differences Between Men and Women

I ran across this item that is posted on Reddit.  The graph is from a large scale study of the American public.  The data illustrates the relative strength between men and women in the US.

The Reddit entry, with the study data and description, are here.

Click to embiggen

This was a part of Megan McArdle's longer discussion about the pay of the US Women's National Soccer Team relative to the USMNT.  The thread extends for quite a while, and she makes some great points.

The rain has stopped in Washington DC, but there's still a tweetstorm coming!

Today we're talking women's World Cup, and equal pay for our champions.https://t.co/9Kdepmnyrc

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) July 10, 2019

Mostly I'm just saving this for future reference.  The folks in Reddit's Data is Beautiful do an outstanding job of presenting complex information in a manner that is easy for almost everyone to understand.

Review: Revenant Gun

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a solid 3-star, DNF review.

I was reading this book for the 2019 Hugo Awards.

This book is a fantasy novel dressed up as MilSF. While there are military related elements involved (as in some sort of space navy), there isn't really much about actual military service. And the "sci-fi" elements involve physics/reality being shaped by local beliefs/customs. That is more fantasy than anything else.

While it is reasonably well written, I just didn't care about any of the characters in the story. I didn't care who won. I didn't care who lost. Whatever the outcome, it was bound to be trouble for everyone else.

The combination of the faux-MilSF story coupled with characters that were not engaging caused me to put this book aside. I have a lengthy TBR pile and need not waste time with something as disinteresting as this was for me.

For the record, this is going in 5th position on my ballot. Definitely below "no award" as it is not up to the standards of past winners.


View all my reviews

Review: Grunt Life

Grunt Life by Weston Ochse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a solid 3-star review.

I heard about the book via an author panel that was rebroadcast on The Horror Show with Brian Keene Podcast. Weston's perspective as a fellow vet sounded interesting.

The premise of the book is that a shadowy organization is assembling vets to fight a pending alien invasion of earth. All of the vets are troubled to the point of attempting suicide. PTSD is very common. Guilt over the deaths of others (combat, non-combat accidents, etc.) is almost universal.

The shadowy organization "saves" the vets from suicide, provides a cover story (faked suicides being common), and then takes the vets to a facility where they work through their issues. Or they don't.

Those that survive the process are built back up into combat teams. The invasion comes and this private military is deployed.

What the author gets right is the relationships between vets; also the relationship between the vets and those they serve. Those conversations really get to the meat of how vets relate to one another and the rest of the world. The other feature that the author handles very well is PTSD and survivor guilt.

What holds this book back are the lengthy internal monologues, using a single POV when there are so many interesting characters present, devolving into gun porn - military formation porn - and overuse of military jargon, and lastly moralizing about corporate/military vendor profits.

At some point, the detailed description of which type/model weapon is strapped to what piece of armor in which specific configuration is just boring detail that gets in the way of the story being told. People with lots of trigger experience might enjoy seeing the MP5 called an MP5 on successive pages.

The same thing applies to unit configuration/designations.

In terms of interpersonal relationships, internal motivations, and a good sci-fi premise, this book has a lot to offer. It also carries some baggage that can get in the way of the story.

View all my reviews

Review: Spinning Silver

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ms. Novik is a fabulous and inventive author.

This could have been just another re-telling of an old faery tale with some sort of modern twist. And to be fair, there are lots of points in the story where you feel like you are revisiting an old faery tale; Rumplestiltskin being the first obvious one.

But those old tales are the bones of the story. Ms. Novik arranges those bones in a way so that when wrapped with the rhetorical meat of the tale, her story is something completely unique.

She utilizes several different POV characters. Most of the story is told through the eyes of about half a dozen characters with another half dozen (or so) that fill in along the way.

There are several characters that act as antagonists along the way. Yet they have their own perspectives in which their actions are revealed as defensible even if they aren't pleasant. Most antagonists get a shot at redemption; most are successful in unique ways.

I read this book as part of preparing for voting for the Hugo Awards (2019). This book will be in first place on my ballot.

View all my reviews

ETA - This is a 5 star review...not 0 stars!!

Review: Trail of Lightning

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review. I read this book as part of the 2019 Hugo Awards for the best novel category.

Trail of Lightning offers a unique take on post-apocalyptic tales. The big "what if" is what if the world ends and the gods of the indigenous peoples of the US (and presumably elsewhere) return. How do those people use their folklore to reconnect their gods and their tribal powers? What if that folklore represented what those people could actually do in the years before the Americas were colonized?

The author appears to have done her homework on representing tribal perspectives in a way that seems respectful and authentic.

One facet of her story that rings true is how power is used with an eye towards benefitting the tribal leadership structure rather than serving the broader tribal membership.

The larger narrative was about a tribal monster hunter....ahem....hunting monsters. They had been created by someone with access to a lot of power. She has to chase down the identity of the one creating the monsters. She occasionally runs into gods (demi-gods?) who have their own agenda. And eventually, she has to discover how she had been used (and abused) as a pawn in a larger game.

This book sucked me in and would not let me go. When I start ignoring the world around me in favor of a book, I know I've found a book with a very well told story. This is precisely such a book.


View all my reviews

Review: The Flipside

The Flipside by Jake Bible
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great execution of a fantastic premise. Time travel has burbled up in select locations around the world. If you are in that location at the right time, then you will "flip" back to the age of dinosaurs. Dinos in the same locations "flip" forwards in time to join us.

And while this phenomenon provided interesting research and sightseeing opportunities, what happens when it stops working as predicted? What happens when you get stuck in the past with a bunch of hungry dinos and no idea when reinforcements will arrive?

What if the phenomenon stopped working because someone has found a way to control it to their advantage.

A nice range of characters invested in their own survival. Lots of interesting back stories.

Just a nicely told tale. This is an author to watch in the future.

View all my reviews

On A Monodirectional Discussion

I was a part of a discussion in an online forum recently.  This was a forum oriented on the SF/F genre.  Conversations can and will run beyond that topic.  Most active participants in that forum tend to lean at least a little to the left.   I am frequently the lone [libertarian/conservative voice. -ed.]

Another participant tossed out a reference to the Koch brothers for their political contributions.  I responded with a reference to George Soros and his political contributions.

The response [to my response -ed] was to implicate that offering George Soros' name was in some way racist or was treading on racist ground.  My conversational partner went on to indicate that they had said that the statement was racist, not that I was racist.

The difference between those two is, in my opinion, diaphanous at best.  From my perspective, the suggestion that a given comment is racist is nearly the same as indicting the commenter racist.

I am not a racist.  There was nothing in my comment to suggest otherwise.  The factual observation that George Soros donates to left-wing causes is not racist in any way.  I objected to the allegation and indicated that I would appreciate a retraction.

A few days later and a robotic Israeli spaceship lander crashed while attempting to land on the moon.  Another individual in the same forum made a "joke" about the moon participating in the BDS movement.  The response from the active participants to this patently racist reference?

Crickets.

I'm not naming the forum nor the participants as a dog pile isn't really what is needed.

The ability to criticize one's ideological compatriots when the cross the line of civility is.

Review: Space Opera

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star, DNF, Dorothy Parker review. That is a thoroughly accurate representation of my experience.

Minor spoilers ahead. Nothing that will ruin the plot as this one flew across the room in the fifth chapter.

Read as a part of evaluating the finalists for the 2019 Hugo award for "Best Novel". Selected as my first novel this year at random.

John Scalzi blurbed the book as:

"As if Ziggy Stardust went on a blind date with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then they got smashed and sang karaoke all night long. Cat Valente is mad and brilliant and no one else would have even thought of this, much less pulled it off."

Surprisingly, I've not bothered to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But I've read lots of other humorous and/or off-beat works. They can be fun.

And I enjoy listening to David Bowie along with a lot of other musical oddities. So again, this sounds like it could be fun.

I was already more motivated to write about this book rather than reading it by chapter 3. The first two chapters were filled with the message that humanity is not the sole sentient species in the universe. The other species think their expression of sentience is the gold standard of sentient life. Everyone else is "meat".

And some gratuitous slagging of Enrico Fermi.

Lots of extended exposition that does a lot of "telling" and not very much "showing".

The story does not improve when we begin to meet our erstwhile protagonists in chapter 3. They are rock stars of mediocre wattage that over-imbibe in various mind-altering substances and glam rock style makeup. The lead singer seems inspired by the pastiche of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. But those two were wholly likable. Little work is done to create a connection between the reader and the protagonists.

Chapter 4 is filled with the "wacky" efforts of one of the afore-mentioned sentient aliens (an Esca) to communicate with every inhabitant of planet earth....at the same time.

Essentially, the major sentient life-forms have decided that humanity is sufficiently advanced to be invited to a galactic sing-off where humanity isn't expected to win and will be thoroughly obliterated if they don't manage to be sufficiently entertaining. You see, these major sentient species had an ugly war in the past. And they decided a dance/sing-off was a better method for resolving difference? Put a pin in that for a minute.

The book blurbs suggested that this book was funny. And there were a few amusing moments. Nothing nearly as amusing as the works of Robert and Lynn Aspirin or Piers Anthony.

In chapter 4 there is a passage where the Esca is using familiar mental images (parents, a friendly waitress) to break the news to all of humanity that their collective lives are on the line.

Perhaps because, no matter their luck in life, they knew in their bones that at least they were better than the kid who brought them their steak medium, not medium-rare, and so could cling to the idea that humans were still the ones being served with a smile, the ones who were always right, the ones with a place at the table, not a place at the dishwasher, for a few precious minutes longer.

Hogwash. Most people appreciate waitstaff because we have had that sort of crappy job. We sympathize with the person that has a crap job and still does their best at it...just like we did.

Later on the Esca is defending the intergalactic sing-off with:

We have a responsibility to those who were here already when that chap with fangs and fur turned up pretending to be civilized.

Is the author actively supporting immigration restrictions, colonialism, and mass slaughter of aboriginal peoples?

By the time I made it to chapter 5, I'd had enough. The text heaps derision on the idea of the individual; at one point the Esca indicates that they had a "problem with libertarians", but they eventually pulled it out.

The entire history of the science fiction and fantasy genre is filled with authors illustrating the efforts of individuals to struggle against and hopefully break the efforts of the collective to make the collective's definitions of "acceptable" to be the only acceptable standard for every individual's behavior. If there is a sub-text to the sf/f genre, it is one of extolling the individual above the desires of the collective.

This novel didn't go into the Dorothy Parker bin because of all those nitpicks. The nitpicking was an indication of a book that contained serious flaws. Extensive exposition, protagonists with few features to base a connection, the humor was barely there, and other general editing flaws (i.e. we are told that the Esca refer to themselves as a "choir" only to have a later self-reference be to "the Esca". The editor was either absent or ignored in this book.

Back to that "pin".  The book does have the nut of a good idea worth exploring.  How do we treat less advanced civilizations?  Should we intrude on peoples that do not have a desire for our level of technology and force them to demonstrate an ability to be "civilized" according to our tastes?  It is [Is it] legitimate to shield ourselves from civilizations that might pose a lethal threat?  Interesting ideas coupled with a less than stellar execution.






View all my reviews

Hugo 2019 - Novel Category

The nominees are:

• The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
• Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)
• Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
• Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)
• Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)
• Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga)

My reading is done.  My reviews are not complete.  But this is where things sit right now.

Award position

• Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

Review forthcoming.  It's going to be hard to knock this one out of first place on my ballot.

• Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse

A great piece of work that engages the reader and tells a unique tale immersed in the world of indigenous peoples.  The long version....

• Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers

Review forthcoming.  This one was "on the bubble" for a long time.  Good characters with a compelling message overcame massive plot holes.

No Award

• The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Initial thoughts - didn't we read Seveneves within the last year or two?  And then there was Lucifer's Hammer from many years ago.  This seems sort of derivative and certainly less inclusive.  A full review is forthcoming.

After a great deal of thought, I ended up putting this novel below "No Award".  Primarily because of one huge plot hole.

Along with everything else, the protagonist experienced anxiety attacks when under pressure.  Specifically, she had trouble when she was appearing in front of an audience.  In much smaller groups or when not in front of the media and/or cameras, she was supposedly OK.  As a result, she ends up taking a prescribed medication for those specific circumstances.

This is presented as a probable disqualifier for putting her in space.  And probably for good reason.  Astronauts that don't deal well with stress are potential risks when thousands of miles away from the Earth.

In her specific case, the conditions of her anxiety probably would not have been an issue.  But rather than have a discussion about when her specific condition might be an issue, the book just waves it off as anyone on anti-anxiety medications is just the same as everyone else that doesn't need such medications.

It was a short cut around a longer conversation.  In my opinion, it cheapened her larger achievements and undercut the larger narrative of her superior capabilities.

I had similar misgivings last year when reading the Prometheus Award-winning The Powers of the Earth.

In this case, Ms. Kowal would have been better served by either having that fuller discussion or just omitting one additional complication to the narrative that involves marginalized individuals.

• Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee

Essentially, this is a fantasy novel that is camouflaged as MilSF.  The SF portion contains little actual SF.  The Mil portion doesn't match my expectations for MilFic of any type.  

I didn't finish this novel because I really didn't care who won.  No one had expressed a convincing case for what a new world would be under their leadership.  A slightly longer version....

• Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente

The short version is that it was long on exposition, short on humor, and appeared to lack useful input from an editor.  The long version....

Review: Dancing in the Dust

Dancing in the Dust by Gwendolyn Pendraig
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is a 1-star, DNF review. Worthy of Dorothy Parker's best.

Utter wish-fulfillment fantasy. The protagonist has magical abilities to see, hear, move fast, and is super strong. Hyper-accurate with kill shots. Gets to kill the people...all the people. Or more accurately, all the men.

The sheer ridiculousness of the hyper-capable protagonist, the drifting plot, and the threadbare misandry caused me to lose interest.

View all my reviews

Hugo 2019 Announcement

The Dublin2019 team has announced the finalists for the 2019 Hugos.  I am...unsure.

One the one hand, I have yet to dive into works by Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Valente, or Rebecca Roanhorse.  I've read quite a few good things about Ms. Roanhorse's "Trail of Lightning".

In the graphic story category, I'm looking forward to returning to Monstress and Paper Girls.

In the fancasting category, Be the Serpent sounds like it might be good.

On the other hand...and that's the hand that everyone hates.

The novel nominees from Becky Chambers and Yoon Ha Lee are from their respective series that have already had entries nominated under the best novel category.  At least one of those past nominated works failed to clear the "no award" bar on my ballot(s).  Maybe these books will be better, but past history would suggest otherwise.

In the graphic story category, Saga is nominated, again.  I've yet to be impressed by that series.  Curiously, the writer, Brian K. Vaughan, is also the writer of Paper Girls.  So he has two entries in this category; one that piques my interest and one that, most decidedly, does not.

The cover art for Abbott does not inspire much confidence.  It reminds me of Bitch Planet from last year.  I would love to forget that Bitch Planet exists.  But never trust a book by its cover still applies.  We shall see.

And in the fancasting category, perennial nominees The Coode Street Podcast, Fangirl Happy Hour, and Galactic Suburbia are back....again.  At least listening to only one of those three has a history of being an actively unpleasant experience for me.  The others have been good, but not great experiences.

From my perspective, the problem remains one of habit.  Many nominees are entries in series that have been previously nominated.  They benefit from the exposure of those prior nominations.  It seems to me that once an author gets nominated, they have a leg up on getting subsequent entries in a series nominated.  Once they join the ranks of nominees, they stand a better chance of getting the attention of influential reviewers for future works.

And let's be honest.  Reviewers have a finite amount of time and space.  How many worthy books get ignored in favor of known authors?  How many periodicals (i.e. Grimdark Magazine) remain unread while a select group of "worthy" periodicals receive the greater share of attention?

Perhaps increasing the number of people nominating works will improve the range of nominees.  One can always hope.

Review: Gideon Falls Vol. 1: The Black Barn

Gideon Falls Vol. 1: The Black Barn by Jeff Lemire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A first-rate start to the series. Lots of flawed characters that want to be redeemed. Excellent artwork. Sub-plots and incompletely revealed characters that will certainly lead to interesting arcs in the future.

Definitely one to follow in the future.

View all my reviews

Review: Infinite Dark Vol. 1

Infinite Dark Vol. 1 by Ryan Cady
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise sounded interesting. A last outpost of humanity. "Something is out there." A steep Lovecraftian vibe.

And while the artwork was pretty good, the execution of the text just wasn't there. Got to the end of the book and just didn't feel like there was any connection to any of the characters.

View all my reviews